This is going to be long, so please bear with.
I have posted about the strong genetic link to autism in my family before on MN, so I'll give a condensed version: both me, my sister, my brother, my mother, and my maternal grandmother, aunt and two uncles all have or had autistic traits of varying degrees of severity.
In my family, the link is clear; it runs through the maternal line. My grandmother's sister was the most severely affected by it: she spent most of her life in an institution, and was only diagnosed as being autistic in the 1990s, at the age of 79. (We have recently found this out by requesting access to her medical records, to provide some proof to the psychologist I am personally seeing for my own ASD diagnosis at the end of this month.)
Her sister, my grandmother, is a very odd person indeed; unable to form friendships, obsessive about routines and food, childlike and literal in her view of the world. Two of her brothers were decidedly strange too - neither married, both were typical "trainspotter" types who lived at home until their mother died, then moved into a shared flat until their deaths in the late 1980s.
Here is the thing: my Gran is Irish. She was born in a tiny village in the West of Ireland in the 1920s, as were all her brothers and sisters (all 11 of them in total!).
They grew up in a tiny cottage near to the sea, all fresh clean air and sunshine. They were very poor, but they ate the freshest foods, home cooked and indeed most of it was home grown: processed foods and additives did not exist back then. No one had a car, even the local doctor travelled around by horse (!), so there was no lead in the air, or indeed much atmospheric pollution to speak of at all, other than smoke from burning peat fires. You washed yourself and your clothing with a basic soap made from lime and animal fats, as people have done for centuries. No emollient oils, chemicals or other contaminants at all. They cleaned their homes with salt, lemon, bleach, borax. Air fresheners did not exist: that was achieved by opening the windows.
All in all, it was a remarkably non-toxic environment for a child to grow up in.
Vaccinations did not exist at all back then, so naturally, none of my grandmothers siblings received them. And yet: one of those siblings spent her life in an institution, mute apart from the odd squeak, arranging things in rows over and over again (magazines being her favourite) only getting up to spin in circles and flap her hands delightedly when music was played on the radio.
Tell me then: if vaccinations cause autism; what's the dealio with Granny and her family, here?
More to the point, what's the dealio with me, because here's the kicker: I didn't have vaccinations either. Not a one.
Mothers in the late in 1970's were told to avoid vaccinations for their babies if there was a family history of allergies, due to a perceived risk of anaphylaxsis. Seeing as my paternal grandmother holds the world record title for the number of things a person can be allergic to, Mum took the decision not to vaccinate me or my sister.
So by the time I was ten, both me and my sister had contracted rubella, mumps, measles...the lot. A fair proportion of my early childhood was spent feverish and in bed. Tending to her poorly kids for weeks on end wised my mother up damned fast, so when my brother was born, he was swiftly vaccinated against everything under the sun as soon as he was due for his jabs.
Did I mention I'm having an ASD assessment in two weeks time? Because I am, so that "avoiding vaccinations in case kiddywink gets autism" doesn't seem to have worked too well for me, huh? Didn't work out too well for Grannyo and siblings, either, did it? No, no it didn't.
Autism is genetic. End of. In my case, I suspect that it was the strong streak of austism from the maternal line coupled with the equally strong tendancy to severe epilepsy (a known risk factor for ASD) on my fathers side that caused my Aspergers.
Finally: my mother was born in 1950. She remembers all too well the kids at her school who were crippled by polio, the pictures on the news of people condemmed to a life in iron lungs (polio again), the stories of men rendered infertile by mumps, women miscarrying or having babies born blind because they'd contracted by rubella whilst pregnant.
When full vaccinations came in, people clamoured for them, and all the human misery caused by the MMR and polio diseases virtually vanished within one generation.
Absolutely final point - well done if you got this far without a cuppa - my sister is a biochemist. Phd, Genetics. First class in all her degrees, worked with some really top people in her field.
Her speciality is bowel cancers, so the study linking inflammation in the bowel "caused" by the MMR jab caught her eye. There is a correlation between GI issues and autism, and she was already aware of this. I remember at the time her describing Wakefield's study as "the biggest pile of nonsense I have ever read", only the words she used were not quite as polite as that.
This "study" is of course total rubbish and has been debunked by a number of in-depth scientific investigations.
The study is horseshiat, but the very real damage caused to children and adults alike by polio, mumps, measles, rubella and chicken pox is not.
My advice? Vaccinate le sprog, and relax.
Best,
C
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