Having an autistic child is not the end of the world--far from it. It is my hope that through this blog, at least a handful of people will get to understand that. My child is amazing, she brings us tremendous joy. We have good days & bad days, but we CHOOSE to focus on the good. Our belief is that by loving our daughter, giving her the most comfortable environment we can, and by most of all accepting her differences, she will continue to blossom--in her OWN way.

6/5/08

Maybe It IS Easy To Be Green?

As Kristina at Autism Vox points out, the message of "change the schedule!" is rather diluted, and fairly innocuous. We never saw a difference post-vaccines with our child. She was diagnosed with developmental delays by 6 months of age, likewise she had issues at birth. So, we would opt to have our child get fewer pokes. Also, as Dr. Chew points out, this also amounts to less doctor visits and fewer co-pays as well.

That being said, anyone who opts to space them out (vaccines), I don't have much issue over that. I would feel rather different, however, if this "spacing out" of immunizations included complete avoidance of any specific vaccines currently available for our children. This is often the rallying cry, to not "expose" your child to the MMR (although let's all remember that the MMR never contained thimerosal, and I'm unsure what they believe is truly achieved by splitting it up). I'm fairly certain Ms. McCarthy has said publicly if she had to do it again, she would not vaccinate her child (or at the least, she'd avoid the "autism shot" as she refers to it; she'd prefer measles to autism remember).

Perhaps further down the road, we'll get a more accurate definition of "Green Vaccines" by Jenny, Generation Rescue, TACA, or others. At this stage, it sure sounds like amongst the antivaxxers, this term means many different things to many different people.

4 comments:

Sharon McDaid said...

Their stated idea of spacing out the schedule might sound OK, and it's not as bad as saying that vaccines are evil and to be avoided, but still, it's a bit odd that people just decide on a hunch that they know better than the scientists. I wouldn't know when the optimal time to give my children each infant vaccine would be so was grateful that it had been studied and worked out. Since they are most at risk when they are very small, I was only to happy to be able to protect them from potentially life threatening disease asap.

S.L. said...

Sharon,

I agree with you. There's zero proof that giving X amount of vaccines at any age or during any time frame is harmful. Like you state, if anything, we are protecting our children when they are small and most vulnerable.

I'd just prefer the message be space out the vax than get rid of them altogether. You know, the lesser of two evils I suppose.

I love your picture--is that one of son's artwork?

Sharon McDaid said...

Oh yes S.L. that is certainly the lesser evil.

Glad you like the picture and yes, it's one of Duncan's!

"T" said...

s.l. states:
"There's zero proof that giving X amount of vaccines at any age or during any time frame is harmful."

Why would you want proof that giving anything to your child was harmful? Wouldn't you rather have proof that giving something WASN'T harmful? If there is a question about it, I feel it is irresponsible not to err on the side of caution with my infant. If spacing it out MIGHT help, why not? It's not about deciding on a hunch that I know better than scientists, it's about understanding the conflicts of interest with the manufacturers and the FDA, that's solid fact. And until there is proof that I am comfortable with that there is not real substantial risk, why would anyone begrudge parents who try to take a safer road.

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