Dr. Oz, the Autism Support Network and Dr. Mercola.

I only posted this today (Mercola’s article) 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, I am not sure really if its possible to view 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. I am not convinced it is quite as simple as the mainstream media would have us believe. With anything I like to explore the for and against, and then I believe I can find the truth somewhere in the middle!

I do not believe anyone who makes the decision to not vaccinate, makes it lightly. There is always a fear involved both for and against the vaccination protocols. 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 already 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 called his pediatrician and was told there could not be any possible correlation between his shot and his behavior. I remember panicking and worrying  if it was going to be a permanent thing. After working so hard to get him to even start making the sounds it was very distressing to see them go away. Luckily he slowly started trying to make the animal sounds, 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 given to me at each vaccination appointment  (wasn’t that enough?!!!!) I found some new 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, I am going to assume that they also did their homework and made the right choice for them.

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.