LovingtheSpectrum

I only posted this today as yesterday I was reading that 1 in 110 children now are being diagnosed with autism! 1/110!!! When our son was diagnosed there was 1/150 – which I thought at the time was terrible enough. Now the numbers are staggering and continuing to climb yearly. I think almost all of us now know a family touched by a spectrum disorder. So I also ask the question “what’s going on here?”. I am not actually anti-vaccine, although I believe that the people who choose not to vaccinate do so after reading thousands of hours of information. I do think its a valid topic to include on this site, simply as people are still so confused in the vaccine debate. The whole Andrew Wakefield thing has been misquoted and misconstrued for so long now, no one really remembers the original results of his paper. Which I truly believe we all should at least read so we know the argument for and against his work. As it is not as simple as the mainstream media would have us believe.

I don’t believe anyone takes it lightly to not vaccinate their child. Personally, both my children were vaccinated on a slower scale, much like Dr. Sears and Dr. Oz chose for their children. My daughter shows no adverse effects (yet) from any of her vaccinations and we stopped all vaccinations at age 3 (although for us it was actually age 5 as we were on a very slow schedule). They each had the separated measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations over the course of 6 months. I don’t regret vaccinating them nor do I know what decision I would make if I had to do it over again. My decisions have been made so luckily for me I don’t have to have that internal angst over whether to do it or not. I do remember that when our son had his chickenpox vaccination he was totally silent for an entire week. I remember panicking and worrying daily if this was a permanent thing, luckily he slowly started trying to make the animal sounds he had been making, again. I did continue to give him his vaccinations until he entered Elementary school when I discovered that not only should I be concerned with side-effects and allergies (wasn’t that enough?!!!!) I found some other information that made me totally reevaluate from a different perspective my choice to not vaccinate. This again, was a personal decision that was right for our family, and I absolutely do not disagree or agree with anyone else’s decision to vaccinate or not.

This is from the other article I read yesterday regarding the Autism Support Networks review of Dr Oz’s show and where he mentions the 1/110 diagnosis. Again a worthwhile read.