MY THINKING HAT IS ON AGAIN

Two posts in one day... hey I reserve the right to be a complete on-line blabbermouth. But in all actuality - there is a good reason for my bi-posting.

I went to the grocery store today and picked up a copy of the recent PEOPLE magazine. For those of you not aware of this, I'm a PEOPLE junkie. Not mostly for celeb reasons - but I like the human interest stories. Obviously my being a total people person and psychoanalytical by nature - I gravitate towards these types of things. Beats the heck of reading psychology and sociology journals (hey I had my fill of that in university thank you very much!).

I found myself reading a story about parents who are involved in one of the first legal fights against immunization's link to autism. They are claiming that their daughter developed autism after her MMR shots. For those of you that aren't on the up and up of the whole vaccine/autism theory - it is believed by some that the preservative thermasil is the reason why children become autistic. Thermasil is a mercury derivative.

Now I have to be honest. I feel for these parents. I too know what it is like to watch your perfect little one transform into a child that is barely recognizable. It is a painful thing to go through, especially when there is no logical explanation for it. It is unfair, and it is undiscriminating. However, I'm not a believer in the vaccine/autism link. I'd go so far as to say that the only correlation is that the onset of autism is roughly the same time that a MMR vaccine is admitted. There has also been enough research to show that the brain of an autistic child is hard-wired much differently than that of a typical child. Different lobes of the brain are working in ways that they normally shouldn't. In fact, brains of children who are autistic tend to be larger than their peers (from birth: this is true of Kierra as well). Looking back, I could see the early earmarks of autism in Kierra BEFORE she was ever administered a vaccine (ie: arching her back, not holding on, not recognizing her name).

I understand how hard it is not knowing where to lay the finger of blame when it is your child afflicted with this disorder. It is hard not to know why YOUR child. I think that placing the blame on vaccines where there is no evidence to really support it though, is doing more harm than good. Using scare tactics to keep new parents from not vaccinating their children is a disservice. Even though autism is a relatively "new" disorder (it was only 20 years ago that it was being identified by the DSM); who is to say a lot of the children long ago weren't autistic and no one knew what it was? Odd Uncle Ed may not have been eccentric - he might have been autistic. Mutes could have been children that were non-verbal autistics as well. Also, it was far more common to institutionalize people that were thought to be "mentally-retarded" or a "black cloud" in the family. There definitely isn't a thorough history of autism. Also, it would not explain why the rate of children affected with autism is climbing. MMR's have been around for a long time. Why the sudden influx?

I'm not so brazen to say I know why the autistic mind develops the way I do. I go by the scientific facts they have already established. It is a malfunction of the brain so it's neurological (rather than psychological - although it does have psychological factors involved). They know that the brain does not develop in the way it should (as I mentioned larger brains FYI: Kierra is five and has the brain size of a 15 year old girl). They have also identified DNA markers for autism, which suggests two things. It could be genetic (there are higher rates of autism in families with one child already diagnosed) and that it is something that probably starts to occur in the fetal brain). They have done studies in Europe with autism affected mice, and have actually developed a vaccine of sorts that have CURED the mice of their autistic traits. If this was a simply case of brain damage caused by mercury, how could such a thing happen?

As I have said - I know the heartbreak of autism. I don't wish it upon anyone. And I too seek the answer as to why my child is the way she is. I want to know if it was something I exposed her to, or if it was just dumb luck so to speak. Of course any parent who thinks along of the immunization cause theory is more than welcome to believe this. I think we are all entitled to our opinions and my thoughts aren't written in stone as being the "more correct." Far from it. I just wanted to throw out my thoughts on the subject and let you come to your own conclusion. But I think the one thing we would all agree on is we all want to know the reason WHY.