As an RN I am very troubled by the flu and any other vaccines recommended for pregnant women. These vaccines are assigned pregnancy risk category C which means "Animal studies have shown an adverse effect on the fetus, but adequate studies haven't been conducted in humans. The benefits from use in pregnant women may be acceptable despite potential risks." I'll bet doctors and nurses about to inject the pregnant woman aren't sharing that info! How can pharmaceutical companies KNOW that these vaccines cause harm to animal fetuses not be required to make certain the same isn't expected in humans?

My research indicates that the flu shot had never been tested on pregnant women. Everything the mother gets will have some effect on the fetus. Most of these vaccines has the ability to move through the placenta and breast milk.
Reputable journals do not discuss vaccine harms.The truth
comes straight from the parents mouth.I also review hundreds of hours of research data-from all over the world,
because you need to look at research from outside of North America.They need to scrape mercury and aluminum adjuvants.
As for my family,no vaccines or contaminants needed.

Yesterday I was "advising" my pregnant friend to "possibly" re-consider getting her flu shot in Oct.. I mentioned the article , her response was, "was this in a reputable ,mainstream, journal ? This is true of many, including all of the doctors, this questioning of material not found within the paid by pharm pages of bible medicine. She said ,"I did it with the others and they are all fine." I dug this up for her. I doubt it will have an effect.
http://theamericanscholar.org/flacking-for-big-pharma/

"The mother's attempt to repel invaders - her inflammatory response - seems at fault"

I posed the questions below years ago relative to rubella vaccines and a possible long term side effect in females. Rubella and chickenpox vaccines contain human fetal protein and DNA that is carried over from the WI-38 and MRC-5 human fetus cell cultures used to propagate the live viruses. My questions in a paper submitted to IOM:

"Can live virus vaccines which use human fetus cells in manufacturing induce females to have an immune response to a pregnancy?

Could foreign human DNA in vaccines induce an antibody response or cellular immunity to “foreign” DNA so that immune mediated pregnancy complications and miscarriages result? It is known that some females in a non-pregnant state have labs that are negative for anti-nuclear antibodies, but who when pregnant develop positive labs for anti-nuclear antibodies.

If natural killer cells and tumor necrosis factor [TNF-a] can terminate a pregnancy and cause complications resulting in pre-term birth, then can these cytokines and an inflammatory maternal response to a pregnancy cause autism to be induced through damage to the developing central nervous system? In other words could autism be a result of vaccine induced maternal immunity to an embryo or fetus?"

A reasonable place to start answering these questions is with the published research done on immunocontraceptive vaccines which by design contain pregnancy specific proteins and foreign antigenic material. Plenty of information on incomplete anti-fertility effects with unintended pregnancies, severe pregnancy complications, stillbirths. Not sure about autism, but am guessing nobody has looked.

I'm positive my son's Autism was caused by an autoimmune reaction to his MMR vaccine that he received at 16 months old, while he was recovering from a couple of illnesses.

Up until then he was hitting his milestones on time or ahead of schedule. A SLOW and steady regression occurred and continued over a period of about 4 years, (while I continued to vaccinate because in 1987/88/89 who the hell knew) along with the sudden development of chronic constipation.

At age 11 Andrew developed PANDAS although we never saw any signs he was sick with Strep. It was after that we discovered the slew of Autoimmune disorders on both my and my husbands sides of the family.

My daughter, who is not quite 3 years older than Andrew started developing a lot of body pain at about 16/17 years old. 5 years later, after seeing at least a half dozen doctors, she was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. The suffering she goes through with this disorder is absolutely devastating and heartbreaking.

There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that regressive Autism can be and probably often is Autoimmune.

Researchers need to be looking at family histories when they look at children with Regressive Autism.

If it wasn't for Dr. Henrietta L. Leonard, (who wrote one of the first papers on PANDAS with Susan Swedo)who made us call family members to get in depth and complete family histories to look for Autoimmune disorders, before she finished her evaluation of Andrew, we never would have known of the extent Autoimmune disorders in our family.

The knowledge I gained from that experience made me go back and look at Andrew's infant and toddler records from his pediatrician and compare the pedi visits, vaccines and illness with what was in his baby book about his development. It was clear as a bell then, what had happened almost 10 years earlier.

I'll say it again, there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that regressive Autism can be and probably often is Autoimmune.

You mentioned the New York Times article that suggests 1/3 of Autism is autoimmune. Someone, I think it was UC Davis, had a study suggesting 1/3 of autism is the Regressive Autism form. Is there overlap between the autoimmune and regressive groups? I'd like to know.

Do people with the autoimmune form tend to develop normally then regress? I'd like to know.

Another study concluded 43% of parents of children with Autism do not further vaccinate their children. Is there overlap those groups and that 43%? Probably.

The population based Autism/vaccine studies looked at Autism as one homogenous group. Hypothetically, if 1/3 of autistics were vulnerable to vaccine injuries due to autoimmune tendency, could studies considering all autistics as one group miss this particularly vulnerable subgroup? Remember, we are talking about a minority within a minority. I still have more questions than answers.

Subgroup risk factor studies have not been done. Former NIH Director Bernadine Healy highlighted this problem before her death. Until they are done I suggest doctors stop bullying that 43%. Parents are trying to protect their children. In context: more Autistics are fully vaccinated than not and 43% of Autistics do not threaten the herd....that's not even 1/2 of 1% of the population.

Lisa that is also dangerous talk.
I read an article at the doctor's office that the pig whip worm could help chron's disease.

I know I considered it for a second. They tell everyone that we are dangerous people about causing people to be scared of vaccines -
They are much more dangerous touting how the immune system is not getting a workout and that perhaps it would all be taken care of by reintroducing parasites.

We, our families are immune compromised and if they don't think so they should ask Tereasa Conrick about her daughter's infection of Giardia cyst.

I found the tone of the New York Times article smug and annoying. The writer acted like the cause of one third of autism cases has been definitely identified--the mother's immune system being too modern, not having the old dirt and so forth. (This came out the same week that we found the old fathers were to blame for mutations causing autism.) In the Times article, the writer mentions some countries with a lot of parasites have virtually no autism--but they are also not vaccinating at nearly the rate in US of A. Not just the parasites are different, in other words. These were interesting speculations but the article very, very carefully left out vaccinations and dismissed that topic quickly in one sentence. i don't personally care for this type of pick and choose science, nor the idea that anything is as definite as the tone of this article implies.

"having the vaccine can be as bad as having the disease"
YES! and giving infants 30 diseases by the time they're a year old will prove to be the most dangerous hit on their biology ever. Our kids have heart disease, diabetes, asthma , crohns, life threatening allergies, ALL rare in the generations before vaccines, not just rare, literally unheard of!! Autism gets our attention,yet all kids are sick, no one came out of this unscathed. Effectively our kids all have AIDS, no, not HIV, AIDS in a vial with a stopper, we all had clues, the strep after a routine shot, the ear infections for months after same, all opportunistic diseases. Many eventually developing signs of brain involvement, with behavioral issues , and worse. We are manipulated and bullied into believing lies and that extends beyond vaccines, we are consumers in every arena, from the breakfast cereal we pick to the president we vote for, someone is closing a sale.