Olmsted on Autism: No Child By Two
BY Dan Olmsted
I've got an idea: Let's not vaccinate kids until they turn two, at the earliest. Of course, I'm not a zealot like the industry-funded Every Child By Two folks who made themselves look like paranoid idiots in New York City last week. I'm just someone who has heard enough from parents and read enough simple science to know that, for starters, some children are vulnerable in ways we don't understand to neurological problems after vaccination; some vaccines given too early can trigger asthma; some vaccines -- HepB and chickenpox, to name two -- are unnecessary; and the whole kit-and-kaboodle has never been studied in toto on human infants, but when it was tested on primates, those little monkeys got really sick and developed features that resemble autism.
As I say, I'm not a zealot: If a mother has HepB, by all means vaccinate the child; if polio pops up in Peoria (unlikely), by all means vaccinate infants; if rotovirus starts to strike down American infants the way it does in developing countries (for which it is really intended -- getting it approved here is just good precedent for the manufacturers to inoculate kids in Africa and Asia by the tens of millions), then get Paul Offit, stat!
I first heard the No Child By Two idea -- though he didn't call it that -- from a doctor who treats the Amish. His own infant daughter had a vaccine reaction from hell -- she actually GOT the disease the vaccine was designed to protect against and spent several precarious days in the hospital's intensive care unit. That gave the doctor a taste of his own medicine, so to speak, and ever since he has urged his patients -- many of whom are non-Amish and show up expecting to follow the CDC immunization schedule -- to wait till the child is two. That way, he reasons, their neurological and immune systems will be better able to withstand the effects of the current vaccine load -- I forget, is it 14, or 36, or 10,000, or 100,000? Whatever, it's too many too soon, and too many are unnecessary, and they are by no means Green with the mercury, aluminum and such that's still in there (yes, I know, it's only flu shots, blah blah blah).
No Child By Two makes things much simpler. I always get asked what I would suggest a parent do if they are concerned about vaccines. After saying I have no kids and no medical expertise, I have to start talking about the lunacy of HepB at birth, why the MMR should be unbundled and given later and NEVER on the same day as the chickenpox shot, which isn't really necessary, and by the way is there any history of autoimmune disorders in your family?, because then you might want to rethink the whole thing …
Frankly, that kind of piecemeal advice doesn't work very well, in my limited experience. I've already described my friends who I convinced not to get their newborn vaccinated with HepB at birth, but then they went ahead with the two-month shots and ended up with their baby screaming for three hours straight after waking up from a dead "sleep." "Don't worry," the pediatrician said, "it's just 'screaming baby syndrome.'" If they had known about the risk of this apparently benign and predictable "screaming baby syndrome," they would have waited, I assure you.
Too many parents know that on this issue, they simply can't trust their pediatricians. I had a conversation recently at a party with an ob-gyn who knew my work. "What about the Danish studies?" that exonerate mercury as a cause of autism, she asked.
I responded. "I don't find them very convincing. Do you?"
"Yes," she said, "I do."
"What about the part where they included outpatient autism cases just at the point where the rate might have dropped if thimerosal was implicated?"
"They did?" she said, obviously surprised. She either hadn't read it, or hadn't read it carefully, or took the AAP/CDC summary hook, line and sinker. Anyway, good luck having that conversation with most baby doctors as you try to argue shot by shot for deferring, de-bundling or dropping the ones that are clearly ridiculous.
No, this is much simpler, and it has the advantage of rubbing the Every Child by Two crowd's collective noses in their own slogan. Some readers, even those who agree with me, are going to cite the practical issues -- pressure from hospitals and pediatricians and day care and so on. My only answer is, so what? Get a new pediatrician, don't send the kid to daycare -- whatever it takes. Regressive autism by and large begins to manifest itself between ages one and two, and if it were me I'd do whatever it takes to shield a child from that risk (and the risk of asthma that Mark Blaxill outlined in a recent column, and ADD, ADHD, etcetera etcetera etcetera). As I understand it, the really nasty battles kick in when a child shows up for public school, and as my Amish-community doctor said, there's plenty of time to start vaccines at age two, space them out decently and still have a child arrive for the first day of kindergarten fully immunized.
What even a lot of people concerned about the CDC immunization schedule tend to forget is that vaccines were not always aimed at infants (or in the case of flu shots, fetesus). There's a 1990 book by Harris Coulter -- one of the unsung elders of the sane vaccination movement -- titled Vaccination, Social Violence and Criminality, which I commend to everyone.
The introduction is titled "The Most Immunized Child in History!" Here are the first few paragraphs:
"The twentieth century is the age of vaccination. Edward Jenner's 1798 discovery that cowpox inoculation prevents later infection with smallpox was the start of a new science. … Most [vaccines] have been beneficial, especially those against the great epidemic diseases which once ravaged Africa, Asia, and Latin America -- bubonic plague, yellow fever, cholera, typhus, and poliomyletis. … These triumphs of immunology are undisputed, and no criticism is made of them in the following pages. …
"However, as so often happens in human affairs, success led to excess. After taming these ancestral scourges, physicians sought new challenges and, in due course, directed their attention to common diseases of childhood.
"The first such vaccine was for whooping cough (pertussis) in 1925. A vaccine for measles followed in 1960, for German measles (rubella) in 1966, and for mumps in 1967. A vaccine against chicken-pox is under preparation today.
"Researchers and physicians, however, gave insufficient thought to the difference between the fully grown adult and the newborn baby. Even in the former, the injection of toxic proteins carries a measure of risk. Injecting the same material into small babies is far more dangerous. The adult immune system has been toughened and can withstand the stress of vaccination. The two-month-old baby is inconceivably more vulnerable. But that is when immunization commences in the United States."
In a footnote, he add, "The rule that vaccination should start at two months -- earlier in the United States than in any other country -- is designed mainly for the convenience of pediatricians."
Talk about an early warning -- this wise counsel from 1990 seems almost quaint from the perspective of 2008, what with HepB at birth, rotovirus, etcetera etcetera etcetera. But Coulter was ahead of his time in many ways: The first chapter is titled Autism, and it may be the earliest full-length discussion of the possible connection to vaccines.
So … who's anti-vaccine? Not me, and certainly not Harris Coulter. We're not against, we're FOR -- for a rational public policy discussion and an urgent science-based evaluation of the current CDC immunization schedule. That's it. And that's a position shared by the two presidential contenders, the former head of the NIH and many other people with "standing" who increasingly are on our side, not Paul Offit's and the frozen-in-amber Rosalynn Carter's. Such a study shouldn't take long -- two years should be sufficient, wouldn't you think? Until we get it, I say No Child By Two.
--
Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.
It's 2017 in Australia and the Government has passed mandatory vaccinations following their schedule or you don't get any childcare subsidies or family tax benefit and now they are passing banning kids from early learning centres and schools unless on government vaccination schedule (46) strains injected, soon to be (54).
Out of control
Posted by: Ella | March 25, 2017 at 09:24 AM
Very well said. Thanks you for speaking out with such clarity on the vaccination issue.
Posted by: Samantha | August 21, 2008 at 06:12 PM
Cherrymam, it's worse than you think. As you properly note, kids in the developing world are still given tons of mercury-containing vaccines. What's more, though, they are given other vaccines that no American child receives. Panacea Biotech recently won a contract to sell vaccines to UNICEF for distribution in the developing world. This vaccines include the oral polio vaccine (which hasn't been used in the US for quite some time because it gives people polio) and "EasyFive," an oral pentavalent vaccine that includes whole-cell pertussis (which has not been used in the US for quite some time, due to the multitude of horrible adverse reactions). It seems from Panacea's website (http://www.panacea-biotec.com/vaccines1.html) that the company exists only to sell second-rate vaccines to UNICEF for distribution in the developing world--they sell only vaccines that no American doctor would buy. The forces that make the vaccine machine run are so strong that I don't know what we can do to stop them.
Posted by: Theresa | August 15, 2008 at 10:36 PM
While I agree partially with this article on not vaccinating till 2 years old, why should we poison our kids after 2 years old, that is can you show any evidence that any vaccine currently administered has proven to be of ANY benefit?
Posted by: Davide Gaeta | August 14, 2008 at 12:27 PM
Dear Friends, I run a nursery school in New Delhi, where all of the Indian made vaccines save one for Hep B contain high levels of thimerosal. And our doctors are so terrific that some time in the last 4 years the Indian Pediatric Association made an improvement on the vaccine schedule- They went from 7 possible mercury vaccines by 6 months to 8 or 9 possible mercury vaccines by 14 weeks- yes, weeks, not months. Meanwhile, our gynaecologists, who have never heard of thimerosal at all figured out that pregnant women could be given even 3 or 4 tetanus toxoids, rather than one or two as was the recommendation. The only thing that saves some of our kids is that some are girls, and some parents have their own distrust of vaccines, and some doctors use imported vaccines and some give mixtures of 4 or 5 vaccines together rther than 2 or 3 separate vaccines, which may contain 25 micrograms of ethylmercury each. So you can imagine what some of the kids in my school look like. Recently, a mother sat in my school with her terrific 2 1/2 year old child who has never received a single vaccine. You should have seen the expression on her face, when she could see 3-4 kids , the same age as her son, who had some of these features: terrible or absent speech/dull expression/poor coordination/poor growth. Afterwards, her comment was this " People gave me such a bad time for not vaccinating my child, that for a long time I never talked about it- But now I am going to speak out! " Oh, yes, and while she was there one fully autistic kids joined my school too. Please, everyone, keep fighting against mercury. It will only be, when the U.S. gets solidly against thimerosal, that the WHO will belatedly begin to protect the rest of the world. Their motto must be "No Child Left Unharmed"
Posted by: cherrymam | August 13, 2008 at 02:57 PM
leilo,
You say if the disease is that bad, then you want to avoid it. We all agree. So how many of us would turn around and deliberately inject a disease that we want to avoid into our child?
Posted by: Grace | August 13, 2008 at 12:59 AM
"His own infant daughter had a vaccine reaction from hell -- she actually GOT the disease the vaccine was designed to protect against and spent several precarious days in the hospital's intensive care unit."
This makes all the sense in the world. There are other ways to prevent disease than vaccination. For example, pediatricians frequently recommend not taking newborns outside for the first several weeks, and not allowing young children to touch them, particularly anywhere north of the feet. Washing your hands frequently is another good way to minimize your risk of catching diseases, and breastfeeding babies also gives them the mother's antibodies. Let's also consider all the bloodborne diseases that are part of the immunization schedule, like HepB. Your child is at virtually zero risk of getting HepB until he's old enough to shoot IV drugs or have unprotected sex. I think Dan Olmsted is saying that this doctor who treats the Amish realized (too late) that he should have chosen another, safer method to protect his child from diseases--like one of the ones I've listed above. Note that Dan says that the doctor's daughter was an infant--relatively easy to protect, particularly if the doctor and his wife were willing to do what it takes (not send the baby to daycare, keep the baby out of high-risk situations, etc.).
Posted by: Theresa | August 12, 2008 at 10:40 PM
"His own infant daughter had a vaccine reaction from hell -- she actually GOT the disease the vaccine was designed to protect against and spent several precarious days in the hospital's intensive care unit."
This still doesn't make any sense. If the disease is so serious that complications can result in hospitilisations then it's a disease I and my children want to avoid. Are the chances of hospitalisation from vaccine complications higher than the associated risks from contracting the disease naturally? What disease was it?
Posted by: leilo | August 12, 2008 at 04:49 PM
I think this would be a good time to draw some additional attention to Hilary Butler's comments.
They are excellent, and point all of us to the type of power struggles, brainwashing, and just plain evil that we're up against.
Please note that she refers to a meeting she had with immunologists and medical officers of health in 1989. The meeting to which she refers was held in 1989. Unless this is a typo, we can note the "reasoning" that was offered to justify infant vaccination almost twenty years ago.
Almost two decades later, the brainwashing and strong-arm tactics are still in place, and seemingly unstoppable.
But I have great hopes that the thinking and behavior of individuals can be changed, and see evidence of it everywhere--especially as we begin to reach more and more people who don't have to be "deprogrammed" from their wrong beliefs in the first place.
No Child By Two.
I see a lot of potential in those words.
Terri Lewis
Posted by: Terri Lewis | August 12, 2008 at 01:59 PM
Leila:
My son was also vaccinated...just like this:
"administering the chickenpox vaccine at 12 months, on the same day as the mmr, as the cdc recommends, is like writing a prescription for autism."
Last week we just went through another round of chicken pox...we have also suffered through shingles...he was fully vaccinated...this is not a rare case...this is very typical for many...far more than the number of children who aren't vaccinated and have an adverse reaction to the disease itself...FAR MORE...so, just as one of our fearless leaders, Renee Jenkins, would suggest...perhaps we shouldn't worry about that tiny little unvaccinated percentage of children who have an adverse reaction to diseases...after all, their 'defects' are not the majority anymore...
Posted by: Barbie Hines | August 12, 2008 at 01:25 AM
Amazing--thank you for your stance and well-written comments. To think that my ASD son--who did receive his MMR and chicken pox vaccines on the same day (at the ripe old age of 12 months and only weighing 17 lbs) add some insult to injury that two of the other shots the Hib and the HepB given on that day were both EXPIRED--one 8 years past its expiration date and the other 3 years---to think what would he be like if he never got those shots?? He had 9 total days of diarrhea after that lovely bundle of shots---I hope that other parents never, never have to ask themselves those kinds of questions.
Thank you for keeping this issue going.
Jenny
Posted by: Jenny | August 11, 2008 at 11:41 PM
Hi Dan,
1n 1989, a group of immunologists and medical officers of health gathered around the table with myself at Auckland Medical school, to try to nut out just what I wanted.
Like you, I wanted children not to be vaccinated until their immune systems and myelination was a lot more mature.
Like you, I suggested two years of age.
A woman paediatrician blurted out their "real" reason why they didn't want to wait that long when she said, "It's much harder to get the parents of a perfectly healthy 2 year old to vaccinate, than to get scared parents of a newborn baby to vaccinate."
So there you have it.
Aside from their reasoning that babies are more vulnerable, that's the nub of it. Get the parents when they are vulnerable and unsure.
Science aside, it comes right back to two things: 1) the easiest way to control people. 2)never allow anything that might show over time, that their previous schedule was 'dangerous' in any way.
Posted by: Hilary Butler | August 11, 2008 at 09:47 PM
I feel that I have to address the lunacy of Leila's comment. Being "spared" from a chickenpox epidemic? Cut me a break. From 1970 through 1994 (the years prior to varicella vaccine licensure in the US), an average of 100 people per year died of complications arising from the chickenpox. In no year from 1970 through 1994 was the number of deaths from the chickenpox greater than 138. In a country of 280 MILLION PEOPLE, the risk of any single person dying from the chickenpox was ludicrously low.
The idea that a vaccine spared Leila's son anything other than a week of itching and scratching would be laughable, if it weren't so insidiously presented as a rationale for loading our babies up with toxins.
Here is the link to the research study, in the Journal of Infectious Diseases (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/315714?prevSearch=(meyer+varicella)+AND+[journal%3A+jid]), published in 2000, volume 182, pages 383-390.
Let's also consider the fact that vaccines wear off. Unless Leila plans to get her son a chickenpox booster every five years or so (along with all the toxic ingredients), then she is really dooming him to get the chickenpox at an older age, when the risks to his health (and his life) are much, much greater.
(I have a link for this one, too: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/356/11/1121 from the March 15, 2007, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, volume 356, pages 1121-1129.)
As a nice point of comparison, motor vehicle traffic deaths in the US were 43,667 people in 2005--more than FOUR HUNDRED THIRTY TIMES the number of chickenpox deaths, on average for the past thirty years. (Data from the CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/search.do?as_sitesearch=www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs&sort=date%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&ie=cp1252&q=%22motor+vehicle%22+mortality&ud=1&oe=UTF-8). Vaccinating all children against the chickenpox because it may kill 100 per year is 430 times more insane than never allowing any American into a car.
Posted by: Theresa | August 11, 2008 at 09:25 PM
Dan said:
"administering the chickenpox vaccine at 12 months, on the same day as the mmr, as the cdc recommends, is like writing a prescription for autism."
And that is exactly how it happened for my boy. He was one day shy of being 12 months old. Was recovering from the flu and after receiving those 2 vaccines he began his dissent into the autism abyss... Everything changed after that.
Posted by: MMR + Chicken Pox = Autism | August 11, 2008 at 08:34 PM
Thank you, Mr. Olmstead! Great article, succinctly communicated! Very clever and vital.
Posted by: Lin Wessels | August 11, 2008 at 08:31 PM
I agree that an IMPROVEMENT would be to delay mandatory vaccinations until at least two. However, that would mean my beautiful, perfectly healthy 17-month-old-boy would be looking at facing some vaccines in a few short months. Don't think so. He's too healthy, alert, and perfect for me to consider messing with his physical, mental, and emotional health. Maybe when he's 15, fully developed, and there's a compelling reason, like an outbreak of some sort, and HE has a say in it, I might consider it. However, unlike my partially vaxed older daughter at his age, my unvaxed child has the immunity of a bull. I'm not going to damage him for the sake of a standard that means nothing to me or to my family.
Lisa
www.Holistic-Treatment-for-Depression.com
Posted by: Lisa | Holistic-Treatment-for-Depression | August 11, 2008 at 08:29 PM
Leila, I'm glad your child was spared from the "chickenpox epidemics." But the idea that chickenpox is something we need to be spared from is driving bad public health policy. administering the chickenpox vaccine at 12 months, on the same day as the mmr, as the cdc recommends, is like writing a prescription for autism. england doesn't have a chickenpox vaccine, so it can't be an overwhelmingly obvious and critical public health measure. it's also creating a shingles epidemic -- and that IS serious.
Posted by: dan olmsted | August 11, 2008 at 07:48 PM
Leila, Friends of our's were NOT spare chic pox and they WERE vaccinated. Guess what the ped tells them when all FOUR kids show up in office with it...vacc is only 80% effective. We have our heads in the sand thinking that the vaccs are 'sparing' us from disease ALL of the time. Don't forget your boosters...
Posted by: Cathy | August 11, 2008 at 07:36 PM
"His own infant daughter had a vaccine reaction from hell -- she actually GOT the disease the vaccine was designed to protect against and spent several precarious days in the hospital's intensive care unit."
""I find this comment rather contradictory. Why on earth would you want to delay vaccinations when the medical complications associated with contracting an actual disease could result in "several precarious days in the hospital's intensive care unit"?""
There is a very, very low probability, in the U.S., of contracting any of the vaccine-preventable diseases that can result in serious illness. The chance of doing so before age two is even more remote. Thus, it is very likely that, if this physician's child had not been immunized, it would not have contracted any serious illnesses. That's what this physician must have realized, after the fact, that helped to change his mind about early immunization. The risks definitely are NOT worth the benefits at this stage in development.
Posted by: lisa | August 11, 2008 at 06:17 PM
"The [Pediatrics] articles were interesting in that they .. are also saying A LOT more studies need to be done with metabolic and mito disorders before we just go ahead and make a blanket statement such as "Every Child By Two."
Pediatrics actually *said* this? So is the AAP admitting this in their own journal with the right hand (the researchers), and then ignoring it with the left (the doctors, and Pharma-whores)?
Keith, was the "first doctor to ever listen to you" now a DAN! doc?
Posted by: Jim Witte | August 11, 2008 at 06:12 PM
The problem with this suggestion is that children under 2 are the most likely to die from vaccine-preventable diseases, and they are also exposed to infections mainly in daycare settings (where they go to as early as 2 months old). My son was spared from a chickenpox epidemics in our area (three sick kids in his daycare alone) because he had been vaccinated.
Posted by: Leila | August 11, 2008 at 05:54 PM
"His own infant daughter had a vaccine reaction from hell -- she actually GOT the disease the vaccine was designed to protect against and spent several precarious days in the hospital's intensive care unit."
I find this comment rather contradictory. Why on earth would you want to delay vaccinations when the medical complications associated with contracting an actual disease could result in "several precarious days in the hospital's intensive care unit"?
Posted by: grooverider | August 11, 2008 at 04:57 PM
Harris Coulter is an extremely brilliant and wise man, and has done an outstanding job of documenting the birth of allopathic medicine over the last 300 years.
The man is a scholar, plain and simple.
Posted by: unherdof | August 11, 2008 at 02:39 PM
"As I understand it, the really nasty battles kick in when a child shows up for public school"
It's really not a nasty battle at all, except in Mississippi, West Virginia, and to a lesser extent, New York.
Posted by: Jan | August 11, 2008 at 02:03 PM
Maybe it should be changed to "No child UNTIL two." That would make more sense.
My preference, though, would be, "No child ever."
Posted by: Jan | August 11, 2008 at 02:00 PM
The first doctor to actually listen to us about what happened to our son following his drastic changes from his 15 month vaccinations specifically stated "I think we made a mistake when we started vaccinating kids before their systems are fully developed. They are too young."
Posted by: Keith | August 11, 2008 at 01:14 PM
Dan,
You're brilliant! "No Child By Two" is so simple and it clearly makes the point of "too many, too soon" right in the face of "Every Child By Two."
A while ago I heard the Japanese did this and noticed significant results. On this link, Japan versus USA vaccination program,
http://www.vaclib.org/basic/japanusa.htm we're told, "It has become rather well known that when Japan raised its minimum vaccination age to two years in 1975 the overall infant mortality rate improved to become the best in the world."
Funny no one in the U.S. seemed to notice, but maybe our experts were too busy devising ways to piggyback vaccines into the three in one, the four in one, right up to the anaconda of vaccines, the five in one. (I remember reading about the six in one in use in Australia in 2004.) The U.S. vaccine schedule policy has became "bigger is always better, more is never enough."
"No Child By Two" may be the breath of fresh air we need to wake the country up. We certainly can't be called "anti-vaxers" with this message, but we are saying it's time to sit back and reflect on the reality that our kids are the most vaccinated, the soonest vaccinated and they're also among the sickest with skyrocketing rates of autism, learning problems, childhood cancer, juvenile diabetes, arthritis, and asthma, to name some of the top contenders. We're becoming a nation of the chronically ill and disabled.
The failure of the medical community and federal health officials to notice the deteriorating condition of our children's health and call for an immediate and honest look at what we're doing to them is appalling. They continue to blindly push for an ever-increasing vaccine schedule while chanting the mantra of "studies show no link."
Anne Dachel
Media editor
Posted by: Anne Dachel | August 11, 2008 at 12:28 PM
If the problems move to age 2 and up, I'm sure we will shortly have "authorities" announcing that these conditions always showed up just around that time, or were diagnosed then, or the criteria just happened to change. The vax early, vax often crew is infinitely flexible and creative in their explanations. And experts at moving the goal posts, if nothing else!
Posted by: MinorityView | August 11, 2008 at 10:56 AM
No Child By Two is a great idea. Catchy slogan that is easier to repeat, easier to promote than a more complicated explanation about delaying and spreading out shots. A better meme. And it might well be a good way to bring out the truth, whatever it is, about the health and neurological effects of vaccines. It ought to, at the very least, lessen the severity of effects and perhaps the number of kids severely affected, if vaccines are indeed the culprit.
However, I suspect what one might see from such a plan is overall higher IQ kids, but a lot of kids who will have the "terrible threes," instead of the "terrible twos." Will ear infections become less common among infants and one - two year olds, but more common among three - four year olds? And will there suddenly
be a spike in childhood disintegrative disorder at ages 3-5 (since it is autism if the onset is earlier--or will the usual age of autism onset just shift from 18 months to 3.5 years)?
No Child by Two would be a good start. A better idea: No mercury. No aluminum. No MSG. No squalene. No other toxic adjuvants. Possibly no shots at all.
My suggestion:
No vaccinated versus never-vaccinated study?
No shots.
Sue
(mom to two kids who were vaccinated on a somewhat delayed schedule. Outcome: #1-Asperger's?NLD symptoms-onset of personality change--age 3.5; #2-endless tantrumming; bipolar-like symptoms-onset age 11 months. Her terrible 2's almost never ended. Both mercury toxic per various tests. Both recovering. Was it the shots? I can't be sure, but, in hindsight, vaccines are very high on my list of suspects. So, until I see the study results, produced in a transparent fashion by unbiased, trustworthy researchers....no more shots. No amalgam fillings, either. I am curious to see whether or not the "terrible teen" phase happens here...or not. )
Posted by: Sue | August 11, 2008 at 10:37 AM
Great article. Another benefit of waiting until two (or later)--most kids can then TALK and actually tell us what is not feeling right after an insult like a vaccine. Also regression in cognitive development and communication skills would be significantly easier to detect. Of course this is exactly what Paul Offit and other profit-motivated vaccine defenders do not want.
Posted by: Rachel | August 11, 2008 at 10:35 AM
From Claudine -
"To the best of my knowledge both Canada and Japan do not mandate vaccines for school entrance. Vaccines and a certian schedule are recommended to parents."
Actually Claudine, even the American vaccine schedule is "recommended" but with a caveat - a zealous public health system with a stick in hand badgering compliance, a shrieking Amanda Peet who is clueless, a screaming Paul Offit who is corrupt to his core, and an AAP that has bent over backwards paying homage to the pharmaceutical industry, and a CDC, a monolith of gargantuan proportion, that has sold its soul for greed. Oh and I forgot the school system that is the ripple effect of all of the above. Need we say more?
Posted by: Sweet Compliance | August 11, 2008 at 08:57 AM
Dan,
To the best of my knowledge both Canada and Japan do not mandate vaccines for school entrance. Vaccines and a certian schedule are recommended to parents. Do you know what other countries "recommend" vaccines to their citizens, and not mandate vaccines for school entrance?
Regards,
Claudine Liss
Posted by: Claudine Liss | August 11, 2008 at 08:24 AM
I read some fascinating articles on Pediatrics (AAP's official journal) regarding immunizations and their risk/benefit to children with metabolic disorders. My daughter, along with autism, is suspected of having a metabolic disorder. I have never been sure if her autism was caused by vaccines. It's hard to tell what my child was like "from birth" since she was given the Hep B vaccine at birth so it's hard to say if she was born with autism or if it came on after a vaccine. However, I do know that she's been sick since birth and with each vaccine she received, she'd get sick with the same symptoms all over again. We've spent 20k in 3.5 years on medical bills with no diagnosis, though last week's most recent tests while she was sick, under the right doctor's care, led us to a much more definitive direction toward Inborn Errors of Metabolism. It's thought that the fever that the vaccines induce aggravates the IEM and can cause metabolic crisis. Which is why she was SO sick her first 18 months with each vaccine she received.
The articles were interesting in that they didn't say that kids with IEMs SHOULDN'T get vaccines but they are also saying A LOT more studies need to be done with metabolic and mito disorders before we just go ahead and make a blanket statement such as "Every Child By Two." It seems like a bit of a catch-22 for kids with these disorders in that they need protected from diseases because when/if they get them, they get hit a lot harder, but they are also saying that because of a lot of these kids are immune deficient, the vaccines might be basically void in their systems and introducing harmful fever inducing metabolic crisis for these kids to battle unnecessarily.
I know most of this isn't about autism, but as a mom with a child that has both autism and a suspected IEM, with the experience of this child getting so repeatedly sick with each immunization, these conversations are very interesting.
Posted by: Laura | August 11, 2008 at 08:07 AM
As alway's what a great article...thanks for all of your work and commitment to this important issue on why not to vaccinate til two. Ironically, reading this I am getting ready to take my one child who was much more fortunate than her brother to her two year check-up to tell him no more vaccination's for this child. I guess we'll be homeschooling in the iceage state of Mississippi for which we live. Hopefully, we'll catch up in the next decade to the other 48 philosophical vaccine waiver states. Until, then happy homeschooling!
Posted by: Dana Sturdivant | August 11, 2008 at 07:35 AM
This is so obvious, so rational, so well stated. Why, then is it deemed so ridiculous and crazy by the mainstream medical profession? It doesn't take years of medical school to figure out cause and effect....my child was vaccinated, then my child became HORRIBLY ill and lost his personality within 48 hours. Not something a Tylenol can fix (yet that was the brilliant advice I was given). If only I had known "No Child By Two".
Nicole
Posted by: Nicole Raimann | August 11, 2008 at 07:17 AM