Many people suffer from problems similar to this. Vaccine could be the cause of autisms. I’m happy this family speak out and i hope this help others to come forward with their stories.

Sanjay,
Thanks for the update. I have been really interested in these cases. Because myself after looking at everything I can see that there is a relation to these shots and autism. Why the government is so reluctant to even think that there is boggles the mind. Especially since autism is rapidly on the rise! My guess is they don’t want to admit it because they will have to shell out major money if they do. Plus these big pharmaceutical companies would be in for it also.

Cynthia, Covington, Ga.

i have two daughters, now 33 and 30 and they were never vaccinated. it was easy back then. you just had to claim religious preference and have a doctor sign it and you were not required to have them vaccinated. i have a grand daughter who is 2 and a half and she is not vacccinated also. the book A SHOT IN THE DARK is a very informative book to read. it was much harder for my daughter and her husband to find a doctor who would support their beliefs because now of government intervention and children who are not vaccinated are not allowed to be in school . my children went to a private quaker school, i am not a quaker and maybe my grandaughter will have to go to a private school also but atleast she will be a healthy, child who laughs and smiles and jumps and runs. it is about time the federal court heard this case and thanks to the polly parents who used all the knowledge and expertise to fight for hannah and the millions of other children suffering from this possibly unnecessary disability/disease.

My son was born in 1974, a healthy, sweet, smart, even tempered child. When he started to kindergarten I took him for his vaccination, in a week or so he had a grand mal seizure in kindergarten, a week or so later he had another one. I was young and dumb but I always wondered if the vaccination played a role in his seizures, I asked the dr. or the heath departement nurse ( I can’t remember which) if there could be a connection with the vaccination and the seizures and they assured me there was not. David began to have behavoral problems but I blamed it on the seizure medication. I had never hear of autism back then and I’m not saying he had it but he did have 2 major seizures and social difficulties after he had them. When I saw Hannah’s parents on t.v. today, I practically hung up the phone with my sister in law to hear what this was about when I heard them mention vaccines and autism. I came to the computer and looked up some of this and it talked about seizures also. I really feel like they answered a question for me even thought it’s been nearly 30 years. He knew all his letters at 3 years old and his kindergarten teacher put him in the advanced class when he went into first grade but I knew that he was advance and worried about how he’d keep up, I knew he wasn’t as smart as he once was. I was advised to leave him in the advanced class and take the kindergarten teacher at her word. After 2 or 3 days in the advanced class the teacher called me and said he couldn’t keep up. I knew I was right and that he needed to be with the other class. Thanks for proving me right, it’s too late for David but maybe it will help some other kids in the future.

Hooee. I suspect the causes of autism are many and varied, and may well be aggravated and/or triggered by vaccines, allergies, and a whole host of other factors. I also wonder if the apparent rise in autoimmune disorders has anything to do with being vaccinated against so many different things when we would not ordinarily be exposed to all of them.

That said, many of my friends seem to have lost sight of the fact that these diseases can kill and cripple children who aren’t protected against them. It’s not like we’re preventing a dozen headcolds.

No one wants to see a child injured by anything. If there’s reason to investigate the vaccines and see if there’s a way to improve them or identify children who are at risk of adverse effects, I’m all for it. But those “childhood diseases” can be pretty daggone savage too. Even when you do everything right, there is no guarantee that things won’t go wrong.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta:

I am compelled to respond to this article since I am a parent of an autistic child.
My wife and I decided not to spend our time suing but invested the time to figuring out how to help my son. One of the worst days of our lives was the diagnosis. We naturally followed up with ‘what can we do?’ No help there. The doctors are only trained to diagnose and not offer any other advice. In the end, the parents are ones to decide what to do and the typical school district would rather be sued than offer comprehensive services.

The ‘medical establishment’ which in my mind includes, NIH, CDC, etc need to decide if real interest exists in finding out what is happening. To me, the medical community is too wrapped up in symptoms and labels rather than the underlying causes. This case highlights a very important fact: there was a metabolic flaw in this girl that was allegedly aggravated by the vaccines. Some independent organizations have claimed this cause and effect for years. No one is listening. In my opinion, the medical community has the blinders on in hopes that a series of genes will be found that predisposes a child to autism. The problem with the thought is the majority of diagnosed cases are regressive autism and not born with at birth. (i.e. normal development and then a trigger)

In case you are wondering, my issues started with the MMR vaccine. Normal development till about 14 months and pow. Our pediatrician could not explain what had happened but ridiculed us for being overly concerned. (We had two other children previously so we kinda knew the developmental process.) Once diagnosed, we subjected our son to an exhaustive set of tests to find: abnormal blood results, yeast infection in digestive track and an inability to digest food correctly (sometimes called a leaky gut). After seven years of education and medical treatment, my wife and I are proud to say that our son has lost his autistic classification (PDD-NOS) and is in a typical 3rd grade class. (He is not perfect but we thank God everyday for what we have.) Some will claim that he was missed diagnosed and never had autism. Not a chance! We worked very hard for several years to fix him. Once the metabolic issues were fixed, his brain received the nourishment it needed to grow and learn. The rest was just time and good educational consultants paid for by us. (A real problem. Parents must find qualified educational consultants that are BCBA certified.)

It is time to stop the nonsense and get busy helping parents.

Charlie

We can relate to this,we have a little guy who is 6 years old. He too was a normal baby, {for I have two older children }so I know about development. .But after that 18 month vaccine shoot,we saw a difference in our little guy.My husband and I believe that this shoot has made our child autistic.We live in Saskatchewan , and its horrible what we have to go through to get help for him,we are always battling for services .What on earth is going on and what are we to do as parents .How can we change this? How do we make it easier and happier for our children?Will someone listen PLEASE Jeanne

whether or not vaccinations are to blame for autism, the causes of autism need to be explored on a broader scale, and answers need to be sought for these questions. stories like these merit much more coverage. as always, thanks sanjay for giving it the attention it deserves.

It doesn’t take a scientist to see that there’s some connection between vaccinations and developmental childhood diseases. There are too many children having severe reactions to these drugs.

Perhaps a look into the confidential files of the pharmaceutical companies will provide some explanation.

Hey Dr. Gupta!
It really baffles me how people are all over the vaccine-autism connection, saying “well I didn’t see symptoms until after the vaccine”…well then why doesn’t every person in the US and Canada have autism? I have never met one person with autism, and everyone I’ve ever met has had the vaccine. Also, why is it that no one stops to think that maybe that age where the child starts to show symptoms is just the average onset age for autism? I understand people are searching for causes and links, but just because a child is vaccinated around that time does not mean the vaccine caused the autism.

My sister is a behavioural therapist who works with autistic children, and she doesn’t believe that vaccines have anything to do with it either.
And with so many refusing vaccines because of this fear, why are the rates of autism still rising? The vaccines have been around for a long time, yet this sudden explosion of children with autism is relatively new. If vaccines were the cause, why didn’t it happen right away when people started to get vaccinated?

Calgary, Canada

Does anyone out there know if there has been any causal link between vaccines and bi-polar disorder?

There are naturopathic doctors who don’t agree with forced vacinations.

I have been vaccinated and so has my daugther but I think we need to question, “How reliable is this?”

Homeopathy is the practice of giving you the very thing you are looking to get rid of (the same nature of these vaccines) but it doesn’t have some of the elements that the vaccines have.

Maybe a more holistic approach would be better. Have the Western doctors talk to Eastern Medicine doctors and come up with a better solution.

Can’t hurt.

I have a son with aspergers and would like to thank CNN for it’s even handed reporting on the issue. The interesting part of the story is the reference to a potential underlying risk factor for autism. This line of research needs more attention given the resources required to care and mainstream children with autism.

It is wrong to think that vaccines are the main or even a minor cause of autism. The rate of autism has been increasing because of the effort being made to diagnose the condition. It has been increasing much much faster than the rate of vaccinations so it is simply unreasonable to think that there is any link between them. When I was growing up, my issues were “imature auditory nerves” which would now be talked about as sensory integration issues and would probalby have classified me with autism, just like my son.

I did a lot of reading on the subject and I have approx. 4 years worth of graduate level statistics. The reason that people want to blame vaccines is that you start vaccines at the same time as the symptoms of autism are readily apparent. Some of the early symptoms of autism actually make the child look more intelligent than their peers, so when they start to degrade it causes even more frustration. The only thing that you have done differently during this time is the vaccination, so it is very easy to think that this is the cause of the problem.

Finally, as a parent, we refused to have our kids vaccinated all at once. At this age you are going to the doctor often enough that spreading out the vaccines means that they will only be late by 6 months or so. Vaccines are much safer than the risk of your kids getting sick, don’t skip them. If you are concern, then spread them out like we did.

This is getting out of hand. There are NO peer-reviewed studies that connect vaccines and autism. The most recent study regarding vaccines and autism was in regards to California, in which they STOPPED using thimerosal in vaccines since 2002. Now allowing stockpiles of vaccines to be used up or tossed, autism cases were still on the increase in California.

We need to pay attention to what autism really is, a physiological condition with a genetic component and a possible external physical trigger. Some kids are more “prone” to have both the genetic problem or difference and then a physical action “switches on” the autism. It may be true that the act of vaccination may “trigger” something in the body, but the nature of the vaccines themselves have not proven to be the problem. If the thimerosal was the issue of itself, then simply performing poison control actions should “clean” the poison out. But that’s not what’s happening.

Autistics don’t process metals in their bodies the same way normal kids do. It’s not just the mercury in thimerosal, but other metals DO show up in the bloodstreams, hair, feces and other bodily function samples. Since they don’t process it correctly, it makes all the other functions in an autistic’s body work improperly.

There’s much work to be done, but let’s not jump to conclusions here.

Duck
Saline, MI

I know this story is going to result in many parents really questioning the decision to have vaccinations for their children, and that has repercussions too. It’s really hard to answer parents’ questions because review of the research appears to tell us that there’s no overall relationship between vaccines and autism, but that there are individual children who do have neurological symptoms after vaccinations… and then you get a story like the one about this little girl. In going through the developmental history of children who develop an Autism Spectrum Disorder, you do see children who fall into various groups… signs of differences in temperament, behaviour, language and social behaviour in early months, even before vaccinations, children who are developing typically and then begin to show slow progress in communication and social skills, and children who are developing typically and then lose skills. While these children fall within the Autism Spectrum, it seems the casuative factors may well be quite different. Sometimes parents and pediatricians aren’t aware that certain behaviours are symptoms of an ASD, but do note later, more obvious behaviours. Many children with ASD also have seizures, and some children have seizures and lose skills, but don’t have ASD. We still have much to learn about the combined role of genetic risk and environmental factors, but I know that doesn’t help parents who are searching for answers for their own child. Thanks for your report earlier today on American Morning — it seemed to be very balanced.

Some information states the government has cut back on thimerosal as a preservative in vaccines. However, why did this practice continue when there has been concern about mercury in fish for at least two decades, but for vaccines, it’s okay?