Are We There Yet?
By Cathy Jameson
I’ve been wandering around my house very distracted. I can’t think straight. I can’t stop moving. I haven’t been able to get anything done. I have so many thoughts spinning through my head right now—all of them surrounding the news reports that aired Tuesday afternoon. Those reports stated that the government acknowledged (and kept quiet about) several vaccine injury claims. Not only were vaccine injuries acknowledged, but they were also awarded lumps of money. The recipients were children damaged by their vaccines many years ago. The story was so big that even the regular media even aired it.
As I watched the live report mid-day (the recording of it is HERE), I thought, “Woweee! Finally, the truth is coming out. All the work we warrior parents have been doing for so long is finally being recognized. Maybe we can soon be done with all the energy and fight we put into telling our own children’s stories. Maybe our kids will also finally get the help they all need.” I felt so confident watching the news unfold. I was truly excited that the truth was being told because surely justice would prevail, and life would return to the normal it was supposed to be. Why did I think that as soon as the news coverage was over that my son Ronan would be magically healed and returned to typical?
After the news ended, I had mixed thoughts that turned into angry thoughts. Of course kids have been harmed by their vaccines—I see it in my son every day! Of course some of that harm has been caused, errr, resulted in autism. Of course this news wasn’t really new news as I have already heard of families being awarded very large lumps of money because of vaccine injury (i.e., Hanah Polling and Baily Banks). Of course I knew the government had to have known that vaccines weren’t entirely 100% safe for everyone. Of course I knew the officials must have known someone was eventually going to get hurt. Of course I knew all of this. But, why am I in such utter shock at today’s news?
The shock I felt turned to disgust. I had to force myself to sift through several negative thoughts because slowly my Tuesday afternoon became a useless waste of time. I couldn’t find anything constructive to do. I couldn’t focus at all. All I could do was wander around my house from room to room. I felt lost—lost because of all the “what could have beens” for so many families. Then, I felt anger. While I bumbled through the anger—anger at why did it take so damn long for the truth to be revealed—I felt even more time lost. Too much time is gone for the thousands of kids who haven’t and won’t receive payouts for vaccine injuries. Not only is that time lost, but it’s probably long been forgotten by the people who should have cared about it in the first place.
Why did it have to be the children to suffer such horrible and life-long problems? Why did it have to be children turned into scapegoats for the greater good? Who is this greater good, and why is it ruining so many children’s lives? It’s all happened right in front of us and it feels like no one is doing anything about it!
In the midst of my mind-racing thoughts, I turned to cleaning. I hate to clean but I needed a distraction. I started to clean out a cabinet that stores educational games and my teaching supplies. I pulled out a pile of word games, colorful toys and some typical kid fun activities. The pile sat on my counter while I rearranged other items in the cabinet. I stared at the pile, and then I glared at it. The word games—I got those for my eight-year old son. Ronan isn’t ready for all the games I want him to play because he’s a vaccine injured kid. The pile of colorful toys is age appropriate for him, but he’s not developmentally ready for them yet. Try as he might, it’s still way over his head to enjoy. The pile of fun stared back at me, and I felt mocked by its presence.
I desperately want Ronan to want to play with the toys and games I’ve gotten him. I want him to feel excited to learn with me. I want him to feel the ease of learning through play that my other children experience. But, it’s all hard work for him, and it’s hard work for me. It’s a cycle of hard work, try, try, try, fail, more hard work and then some success while we try, try, try again. Almost everything Ronan does takes lots of work. The worst part of it is it didn’t have to be like this.
As I soaked in more of the news conference later in the afternoon, I followed some postings on blogs and other sites of well-known autism advocates, I kept seeing a number: 83. The news stories included eighty-three financial payouts that have been awarded to families of vaccine injured children. Eighty-three known cases. Eighty-three multi-dollar awards. Eighty-three children. Eighty-three families. Some of the vaccine injuries were documented back in the 1980s. That was last century! You’d think there would have been a memo about this—to end the dramatic and devastating reactions children were having from their vaccines. That memo should have gone round the world and back again. It needed to be read and shared to protect future children. But, for some reason, that news wasn’t shared.
Reporting preventable life-long suffering obviously wasn’t in the forefront of the government’s agenda. Instead, as the U.S. recommended vaccine schedule grew, 83 recorded vaccine injury cases were tucked away in the far recesses somewhere in our government. Was it tucked away and then meant to hopefully be forgotten?
Even with this news being made public now, I fear that we still have a long way to go to prove to many public officials (as well as the medical community) that their one-size-fits-all vaccine schedule has and is going to continue to hurt people. News of those 83 cases could have saved lives. If that information had been shared--it could have spared a few lives, saved a few settlement dollars and returned a whole lot of trust to parents like me.
Part of me is still shocked and probably will continue to be as I soak in all of this information. I’m still left with a child who needs round-the-clock care. Ronan tries to be independent but he is so very dependent on me. I long for the days that he can grow typically and enjoy life fully. He’s far from ready to be on his own so we trudge together, learning as we go, keeping our chin up and waiting for those little bits of success to grace both of us.
Until the government can readily admit and apologize to the rest of us, we are far from being done working for our children. I pray that new parents take a step back when they see the current vaccine schedule. I hope they do their research on what vaccines are being recommended and why. I hope that they have more time to absorb everything that has just come to light so that their child is spared what many of our vaccine injured children have gone through. As much as I wanted today to be an end of the suffering and the work, I think it’s the beginning of a new leg of a very long journey: the unfortunate journey of the preventable vaccine injury
Cathy Jameson is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
This is the first time I've seen the overweight issue mentioned as a vaccine side effect. I've been blaming myself, blaming the ADHD meds my poor little guy has to take. He's eight and weighs 106. He's 4'5". I have to buy husky pants and hem the legs. Overweight runs in the family. He only wants cheese and dairy, and I can't fight this battle, because he will sneak what he wants in school, anyway. I'm at a loss what to do to help him... He's come so far, and we have to pick our battles. I see all these skinny little kids with autism, and this is the first time someone has mentioned the vaccine side effect of overweight. My little guy was also double vaxed with an ear infection because he was "behind" on his shots. AND they insisted he have a flu shot, as well. And there went my happy healthy baby. It makes me so damn mad.
Posted by: Sue Morgan | May 16, 2011 at 02:45 PM
As much as it sounds like big news, I don't think it is. We already know that children are compensated by the vaccine court for brain damage, which may or may not cause autistic symptoms. The only difference is they label it as 'post vaccinal encephalopathy' instead of 'autism' and that's why those children with identical symptoms got payouts and the ones labelled autism didn't.
As far as I'm aware the medical profession have never denied that vaccines cause brain damage (just they underestimate it and say only in 1 in a million cases).
So I really don't think anything amazing will happen from this.
Posted by: Joanna Karpasea-Jones | May 16, 2011 at 09:34 AM
IT IS REALLY HARD NOT TO LOOK AT MY GRANDSON AND BE ANGRY FOR HIM, THE PEOPLE WHO HURT HIM KNEW BETTER. HE WAS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LITTLE BABY HE WAS ALWAYS LAUGHING>WHEN HE WENT FOR HIS CHECK UP HE HAD A EAR INFECTION. THE NURSE GAVE HIM 11 VACCINES, BECAUSE HE MISSED HIS LAST BABY VISIT.SO SHE POKED HIM FULL OF POISION. HE HAS NAVER BEEN THE SAME. HES 10 IN OCTOBER, WEIGH 201 POUNDS, WEARS MEN SIZE 42 WAIST PANTS, AND MENS 8and a half shoes e wide he just keeps gaining and gaining. no matter what he eats or not. if he dosent eat he still gains, it scares me hes morbily overweight. and the doctors turn their heads the other way. and say hes ok. hell be alright.they dont even know what to do. the vaccines did this to him , and no one wants to fix it. the whole thing makes me so sick, i dont trust anyone now.
Posted by: BARBARA RODRGUEZ | May 16, 2011 at 12:20 AM
@ CT teacher
RE: Does anyone think that God or Nature intended that humans would have to shoot themselves up with such a filthy concoction in order to be healthy? It seems to me that we need to live in harmony with the laws and forces of nature in order to achieve better health.
Exactly. And this is why this battle is bigger than just needing "safer vaccines" as if an innate poison can be anything but just that. This is about waking a slumbering public to understand what the nature of illness actually is. That will absolutely turn the medical world and our western civilization upside down. As you point out the way we've been doing medicine in the main stream for a long time now isn't working in harmony with nature at all. Health isn't something you go to someone in a white coat to get. It's the consequence of a correct lifestyle or returning to a correct lifestyle. (Diet, exercise, rest, and stress management)
Posted by: Adam M | May 15, 2011 at 10:24 PM
barbaraj-You are so right. Many children have been damaged in some way by vaccines and not all damage is ASD. I am so sorry about your son. I have believed for a long time that the obesity problems in this country are caused by vaccines. There are many health problems that we could lay at the door of the vaccinators, including eating disorders, depression, teenage violence and aggression, early puberty, infertility, many behavior problems including ODD and anti-social behavior, and most neurological problems as well as the very common problems of asthma, thyroid and endocrine disorders, and GI problems as well. I suspect that leukemia and many childhood cancers are on the list as well. The list goes on and on. It is important for people to realize this so that they don't think that going back to the vaccine schedule of the 70's or 80's will put a halt to vaccine damage, or that somehow making vaccines safer will do the trick. Vaccination has never been proven to be safe....it was just assumed so. Even the SCOTUS has deemed them unavoidably unsafe. We are just beginning to scratch the surface of the damage they cause. Does anyone think that God or Nature intended that humans would have to shoot themselves up with such a filthy concoction in order to be healthy? It seems to me that we need to live in harmony with the laws and forces of nature in order to achieve better health.
Posted by: CT teacher | May 15, 2011 at 06:23 PM
Angus . . . 10 minutes is not long enough.....love the thought tho.
Jill Fenech
Posted by: Jill Fenech | May 15, 2011 at 04:04 PM
JenB, yes, the first Lady is trying to cure a side effect of vaccination, the metabolic errors that are causing our kids to be overweight and develop type 2 adult onset diabetes. My son, age 10 , wears a size 18 husky pants, a size ten men's shoe (new pair this week!) and is weighing in at 140lbs. I breast feed for a minimum of two years, and do not offer food the first year, they take it off my plate, as tasters only, until they are ready for real food. I was accused of overfeeding before I ever fed him!! Cut back on the milk..the cereal..the cookies..the soda..no..no..no..and no..we didn't have those things. There is so much more damage to consider beyond ASD, we are witness to a damaged generation, few if any were not harmed in some way. I was told yesterday by my son's first grade teacher, that they do not know why, but his grade is reading the same literature as the third/fourth grades..better program..smaller classes..no answers...just different children..Yes..different children ..and yep I cried for my ten year old, who could have been so much more if I had him a few years later..not that my first grader dodged the entire bullet..his class has 20 percent carrying asthma inhalers..including him! Meanwhile I come home to my newly three yr old..who is explaining to a girl that it's okay to play and to like spiderman, he has saved many girls too! I tell him to put his shoes on because he may step on something , he balks but does it..because I fear tetanus!
Posted by: barbaraj | May 15, 2011 at 03:07 PM
Today, eighty-three cases of chicken pox would make national news...yet, just 20 years ago it was so common that parents would purposely expose their children in order to get this mild childhood illness over with. But eighty-three cases of autism? Crickets chirping....
Posted by: Vicki Hill | May 15, 2011 at 02:23 PM
I think you are probably right that we have a long way to go. I'm pretty sure progress will only be made to the extent that the general public is made aware of the truth, and it will probably require a significant loss of trust in the "health establishment" before any change that is not superficial there will be made. Just like it took "parents" to do some follow-up on these vaccine injury cases, it will probably take a large informed motivated group of parents to bring about any true reform.
This is going off on a tangent, but I was looking for stats on yearly reported cases of measles and ended up here:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/measles.htm
Looking at the PDF linked under "Morbidity:"
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus10.pdf#044
I particularly noticed the graph on page 22 of obesity rates among children (I get too easily distracted on the net). I'm not sure I did my math right, but there were fairly distinctive spikes in certain years and age ranges such as an increase in 2-5 years born between (I think) 1996 to 2001 that make me wonder what a study looking at thimerosal exposure and obesity would show?
May be purely coincidental, but I wouldn't be surprised if the current epidemic the First Lady is attempting to remedy is another cost of anything-goes-in-disease-prevention.
Posted by: JenB | May 15, 2011 at 02:07 PM
"Are We There Yet?"
Good title.
*I am sure that Barbara Fisher thought we were there in 1985 when there were Congressional hearing on all of this!
*I am sure she thought so for sure when in 1986 they acknownleged that some kids were being hurt and Congress set up the Vaccine Court.
*When those stubborn Gods that rules the vaccines finally changed over from the DPT shot to the DTaP shot - well we arrived, finally? "Right?"
*Dr. Wakefield and his study on the MMR, finally a top ranked medical guy spoke out - so now we arrived, finally, right?
*Senator Dan Burton's grandson is injuried and Congressional hearing started up -it is at the beginning of a new century - at last - are we there, yet? surely we are!
* A decade has passed since Dan Burton and during that time we have grass roots growing.(actually more and more people are getting hurt). It was never going to be the government or government agencies, acts of Congress, decrees of judges - it is going take people just plain people and - lots of plain people that are involved with "Age of Autism" TACA, or Generation Rescue, Safe Minds. Did you notice that it was 83 families that stood up and spoke out - not some judge on the Supreme court!
We are still not there yet - No, but we are finally toward the end of it. I mean one way or the other we are close to the end. Either we all are sick with an immune disease (one out of 38 is it??? a recent study), or we see the problem and fix it.
Posted by: Benedetta | May 15, 2011 at 02:04 PM
RE: Eileen
I sympathize with how people feel about the thought that their children have been hurt by vaccines. And I do not know why my daughters have ASD. But I think to focus daily on that and the anger it brings must hurt the very children you are trying to help. To look at your child daily and think how damaged they are and how it could have been prevented is to always view your child through a lens of anger and disappointment.
I agree and, like John, I disagree. I ask myself all the time, am I focusing to much on the evil doers (and their creations) that caused this more than on the work of repairing Zach and applying all the other lessons learned. It's been said we are educated far beyond our obedience. I think my experience could be summed up that way. It's just how humbling life can be when you understand how many wrong turns you've made while following the crowd or as God puts it "the broad road". In truth, my child is neurologically deficient because he is neurologically damaged. But he has no less value in God's eyes or mine for that matter. But I do get your point about bitterness overflowing into our attitude toward our children. And for that we all need HIS help.
Posted by: Adam M | May 15, 2011 at 02:00 PM
Eileen,
Thanks for commenting and sharing your experience. I usually write the 'hopefully ever after stories' and have for several years. The tide is turning though and so has my outlook. As more news comes out about these preventable vaccine related problems the more I reflect on those never should have been moments for my son. It hurts deeply to know I could have been better prepared for his vaccine damage. And, yes, heavy word to use but damage was done to my child, and it was done by people who knew.
I try to remain as optimistic as I can about Ronan's future despite the very difficult issues he faces. I have gained more confidence in myself as I look past Ronan's disabilities to draw out is abilities. That takes extra learning, discovering, planning, navigating and then executing everything it takes to make each day successful for Ronan. I never thought I'd be working as hard as I have for one child, but I will never give up making sure he can be as successful as he can be.
It's a horrible thing that many, many children have suffered needlessly. To know that the people in charge of the vaccine program have given up on telling the truth and have failed us is even worse. For that reason I work daily through my struggles, through Ronan's chronic problems, through the very happy joy-filled moments we both have and also right on down through the rip through your soul moments. All of it gives me some sort of strength to make tomorrow better than today. The day I stop trying to help my son would be the is the day I have failed him.
Posted by: Cat Jameson | May 15, 2011 at 01:40 PM
Eileen
I don't think so: people are fairly realistic about their own children, and justifiably scared about their futures which are anything but safeguarded. Most of us also desperately don't want the same thing to happen to other people's children.
Posted by: John Stone | May 15, 2011 at 12:50 PM
Cathy,
You have a written a beautiful and heartbreaking piece. I can relate as my 12 year-old daughter still loves Little Einsteins and Blues Clues, whereas her typical counterparts have moved onto Justin Beiber and boys. The way it looks now, she will never be able to live independently, and she just had her first seizure last month, another complication in her already challenging life. However, she is the smiling, radiant joy of my life. And though I would give anything to make her more capable of navigating this scary world on her own, I do not see her as damaged. I cannot spend my life looking back at what might have been because that does not help her.
I discovered this site very recently, and have learned an enormous amount about parent perspectives, vaccines, and theories on autism. I sympathize with how people feel about the thought that their children have been hurt by vaccines. And I do not know why my daughters have ASD. But I think to focus daily on that and the anger it brings must hurt the very children you are trying to help. To look at your child daily and think how damaged they are and how it could have been prevented is to always view your child through a lens of anger and disappointment.
I pray for all the parents like myself who are parenting kids the world sees as deficient. I just refuse to see my beautiful daughters the way the world sees them. A pastor once told me my girls were perfect in God's eyes. I believe that is true.
Posted by: Mom of two girls with autism, AKA Eileen | May 15, 2011 at 12:09 PM
Good questions raised, and illuminating emotions explored Cathy. Thank you as always for your heartfelt posts.
Great comment and insight Adam M.
Indeed I think the next surprise could be, not why did certain children have to be the "scapegoats" for the greater good, but rather, as Adam alludes to through his reference to our current misunderstanding of disease and its origins would be to properly re-examine Vaccines from the currently held conventional assumption of sacrifice for the greater good. Is there truly any greater good at all?
Or is this assumption of existence of a greater good yet another myth that will come tumbling down along with the false premise that there is no link between vaccines and autism. I believe no greater good for humanity and the macro level of disease prevention will be found when such examination is at long last properly undertaken.
Posted by: jean | May 15, 2011 at 11:57 AM
Great article Kathy reads as if you put pen to paper and had a more productive time later.
And as they say "83 is just the tip of the ice berg" I might add,said iceberg is the biggest , floating , drifting, damaged, dead, children bigger than anyone could imagine.
The CDC should be had for corporate man slaughter and Offit`s billions of dollar profit made on the back of our kids should be removed from him and distributed amongst the top Autism type charities for re distribution.
Offit , lock him in the room with 10 mothers of autistic kids for 10 minutes that should solve that one.
Good to write..
Angus Files
Posted by: Angus Files | May 15, 2011 at 11:01 AM
RE: The news stories included eighty-three financial payouts that have been awarded to families of vaccine injured children. Eighty-three known cases. Eighty-three multi-dollar awards. Eighty-three children. Eighty-three families. Some of the vaccine injuries were documented back in the 1980s. That was last century! You’d think there would have been a memo about this—to end the dramatic and devastating reactions children were having from their vaccines. That memo should have gone round the world and back again. It needed to be read and shared to protect future children. But, for some reason, that news wasn’t shared.
This is why I don't advocate for "a return to the 80's schedule" or any other delayed / alternate schedule. Vaccination has been causing untold damage for as long as it's been practiced. It's just gotten worse as we've done more of it. And the argument that without it we would have raging epidemics of infectious disease doesn't hold up when you do your homework. Instead the emphasis healthcare should be on the very things that brought down infectious disease - improvements in sanitation , hygiene & nutrition especially in cities. It s also time to take a second look @ Pasture's version of germ theory. Please read The Curse of Louis Pasture by Dr Nancy Appleton Ph.D. If we really understood the significance of the terrain vs. the microbe we would do medicine / demand it different. Pharma makes a lot of money because we live in fear and don't recognize the role we play in creating disease by our own lifestyle choices. Please see Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A Price.
Posted by: Adam M | May 15, 2011 at 08:04 AM