Published on 12, July, 2020
I don't think I've perused this site in a long time......maybe 5 or 6 years.
I watched Louis Theroux's excellent documentary last week (aired in UK on 19/4/2012) and thought there would have been at least one discussion at this site. Unless I've missed it, here's one to get the ball rolling.
These are my thoughts on the current situation. I haven't put any links to my theories but if anyone wants them I'll list them separately.My son was diagnosed ten years ago with high-functioning autism. Concerns were raised at his 3.5 year assessment as he wasn't speaking. After 6 months of tests, the CDC (Child Development Centre) made their diagnosis. My wife cried on the sofa while I hugged her. I can remember all the 'milestone' dates as if it was yesterday.Tom did vocalise from the beginning and started to talk around 9 months. By 12 months he had a few words. After his MMR (15 months) he lost those words. He didn't have much shared non-vocal communication either (ie. staring at a cup or a toy that he wanted). It was something we watched for like a hawk in his sister when she came along 4 years later.Of course, when we underwent an 'Early Bird Training Programme' for parents of newly diagnosed children after his diagnosis, the child psychologist informed us that it was a coincidence that his words should disappear around the same time as the MMR jab. To be honest in those days, I didn't think it was the jab that caused his autism as he didn't have any massive side-effects. Not like some of the parents we met on that course. Over the eight weeks it took place, we swopped stories and some of the parents noticed immediately after the jab a change in their children. Their stories of incessant crying and fits in some cases were heart-breaking even if, from a medical standpoint, they were only anecdotal. I've always wanted to go back and ask the child psychologist where she found the information that says 'autism' begins to show between fifteen and eighteen months of age. Over the years of study, I've never come across a piece of research that covers this. It's only with hindsight now, that it seems a pretty convenient way of covering up any damage that might occur through a much increased vaccination program that we now have.So there it is. My research over the last ten years has brought me to the indisputable conclusion that the increased rates of autism are down to ONE significant cause, with a myriad of possible results.That cause is of course the vaccination schedule.The myriad of possible results I stated above, is because although vaccinations are the trigger for setting the autistic brain in development, I don't think they are acting alone. I think the damage is further fuelled by the food intake of the children and their individual DNA make-up. I actually think the idea that 'autism' has a possible 'genetic' make-up (the inheritence theory), is probably only a small risk factor compared to the massive risk that vaccinations pose.My silver bullet for making such a bold statement lies in a very, very, simple fact. Take any un-vaccinated population around the world (the Amish community in the USA is a good example). The rate of autism is between 1 in 10,000 - 15,000). The reason why the rate is difficult to assess more accurately, is because the incident rate is so small and because there are not many places left where the actions of Big Pharma have not been steamrollered through (cue the image of Ewan McGregor trekking through the backs of beyond in India and Nepal last Sunday evening to deliver vaccines to a remote village. I do hope he goes back with a film crew when the first cases of 'autism' are reported in the future). Compare that rate to the New Jersey rate which I was absolutely shocked to read as being 1 in 29.You also have to do your homework where vaccinations are concerned. I am in no doubt we will look back on this period of medical history and consider the actions of some people in authority with the same feelings we have towards the clinicians who experimented on patients with mental health problems in the sixties and seventies. When I ask most people 'how many children do you think died of measles in the UK in the year preceding the introduction of the vaccine?' Most answer in the thousands. They are shocked when I say '30'. And out of those we don't know how many had such 'underlying health problems' (as the BBC News is always keen to point out) that they would have unfortunately died of something else anyway. That isn't to say that measles is a simple disease with no risks. Of course in serious cases, encephalitis can cause serious problems. But we've come a long way since the Second World War and cases of measles and their complications were dropping year on year. Mumps never killed anyone and the same for Rubella. If it sounds as if I think the MMR jab is the sole cause of autism, I don't. I think it's the combination of everything. The thimerosal (mercury) preservative in the vaccine, the use of animal tissue and other genetically modified material, make vaccines potentially fatal. You never hear about the risks, but search around and you'll find cases of death, paralysis and other debilitating disorders because of vaccines.You may ask, 'if vaccines are the cause, then why don't they affect everybody?' I think in part, they probably do. If you correlate the rises in asthma, eczema, hay-fever, mouth-ulcers and a whole host of other non-life threatening disorders (actually asthma is life-threatening) between vaccinated and un-vaccinated populations the evidence is once again there to be found. You have to disregard almost 95% of medical research because it often is funded by pharmaceutical companies for the sole purpose of demonstrating the 'safety' of their products. Any negative findings are routinely hidden from the rearch data, thus making the results meaningless.What I found quite shocking in Louis' film was the visual evidence of what I'd been reading about over the years. The rate of obesity in the States is currently running at 37% of adults and 1 in 2 of every child. The figures are mind-blowing. The States also has been Monsanto's GM playground and coupled with a massive lack of nutritional value to the food results in what I perceived on my TV yesterday. When the young man was collected from the hostel to spend the day with his mum, I was shocked to see him tucking into the fast food. His actions looked entirely like an addict trying to get a fix. I don't mean this in an offensive way, but if the 'fuel' of autism is the action of a diet upon a damaged body, as many clinicians working in the field suspect, then we need to fix these addictions.I realise my views are probably very controversial, but if anyone is feeling pangs of guilt from subjecting their children to the vaccination schedule, I would advise them to let it go. We can only do what we think is for the best, and I'm in no doubt that we all acted in what we thought was the best interests of our children. I actually think the term 'autistic' is becoming redundant now for the simple reason that I've met too wide a 'spectrum' of children and adults who are termed 'autistic' for it to be meaningful. I think of my child's 'autism' now, as a result of someone else's incompetence on the good days, and down-right evilness on the bad days. I also think we need a term that expresses exactly what these children have ended up with .....a term such as 'government damaged' but with a positive spin. Tom hasn't had any more vaccinations since the age of about 3. What I've learned about the whole process of vaccinations means I will not subject him or his sister to any further vaccinations until they are old enough to weigh up the evidence themselves and then make their own decisions. Funnily enough, the autism specific advisor who was one of the team who delivered that very first 'Early Bird Programme' I mentioned above ten years ago, told me she had had four children herself. She's since retired but guess what?..........none of her children ever had any vaccinations whatsoever.Food for thought.
As I said I haven't visited this site in a long time, but I was surprised to find how large the NAS has grown (if the size of the website is anything to go by). What further surprised me was the availability of data concerning everything to do with managing autism (from behaviour to legals, education to work etc). There is a lot of stuff on here. What I could't seem to find easily was any mention of causes of autism.
Where are the voices suggesting what the causes of this 'development disorder' are?
Where are the independent research papers outlining various inquiries into possible causes?
Surely this should be the number one priority for an organisation dealing with autism, shoudn't it?
I know only too well how difficult it is getting any help to deal with my son's autism, but if I could stop one more child and their family going through the journey that we've gone through, I would.
If, as I have claimed, the rise in 'autism' that we've seen over the last thirty years, that correlates perfectly with the increased vaccination schedule, is due to vaccinations then parents need to be informed of the risks involved. Then can they make an informed decision as to whether the risk of 'autism' and the subsequent pressure it places upon the family ( ie.the immense emotional and financial strain, the Extreme Love that Louis talks about) is worth the risk BEFORE accepting vaccinations.
I would have foregone ALL vaccinations for my children if I knew then what I know now.
I welcome your comments and debate.
Al
altruistica said:Over the years I've often wondered what the problem might be with Tom acquiring language. He's definitely had to use different parts of the brain to learn how to speak. The way he has had to learn grammar (in a spoken context) also has been different. He had great difficulty choosing the correct personal pronouns (he would often say things like 'She gives his watch to her' when i should have been 'He gives his watch to him' or similar). As he was into Mario Kart at the time, I made a load of laminates that featured the cars, the characters and the differnt pronouns. It took me two days of printing, laminating etc. I thought it would take him a couple of months to get the idea. We played the game twice and he'd got the idea. The visual aids succeeded in less than an hour what months of work had failed to achieve. I knew then, that for Tom to learn, the correct keys had to be provided to open the lock.
I think there was a few things going on there.
Firstly, you were attaching the information to be learnt to something that interested him (Mario Kart) - we're often very driven by what interests us and very little else.
Secondly, you were presenting the information in a visual, and from the sound of it kinesthetic, way - and, as you mention later in your post, we're generally (though it's not a universal) visual-kinesthetic thinkers - which I'll come back to shortly.
Thirdly, though I'm not sure if this relevent here, what you said about the 'correct keys' was interesting - particularly regarding language - if you ask me what a given word means I will often struggle to give you an answer - it's not that I don't know, but it's that there's no context to the question - ask the same question in a slightly different way, giving context, or ask me to give an example of when the word might be used, and I'm more likely to be able answer the question. It's not something I fully understand myself though.
altruistica said:Today was a classic example of the deficit. I had him doing a Maths Entry Level paper from 2009. One of the questions was on directions (ie. 'Bath is SW of Birmingham' type questions). After I explained the points of the compass to him, he tried to answer the three questions. In each case you had to complete the phrases, such as 'Leeds is ______ of Manchester'. The answer was EAST, but he put WEST. In each case he put the opposite. After questioning this I found out that he thought it meant.....'Which direction do you have to go in from Leeds to get to Manchester'. We've come across difficulties like this in the past, where the use of language just gets in the way. In these situations you just have to do numerous examples just to show what the language means.
Once again, directions are something I struggle with all the time - and again, it illustrates the way we, or at least I, think visually - even if there was a map of the UK in front of me, showing Leeds and Manchester, and I was given that same 'complete the phrase' task, I would answer it by first assuming North was 'up' on the map, and visualising a compass symbol with the direction letters of N, E, S, and W written around it, and transposing that over the map. I don't hold the piece of knowledge 'Leeds is east of Manchester' in my head.
altruistica said:I think Temple's thoughts about thinking in pictures is really relevant, as it's something I think we all do.......it's possibly just that the pictures in ASC cases are much more pictorial than verbally descriptive.
You say that thinking in pictures is something we all do, and in a sense you are correct, however, let me ask you a question - when you're thinking about something, do you have a voice in your head? and does that voice ever stop?
For most neurotypicals the answers to those questions would be 'Yes' and 'No', however for some autistics the answers would be 'occasionally' and 'often'.
We all have three (well, possibly more, but psychology generally recognises three) modalities of thought (Auditory, Visual, and Kinesthetic) that we each use to differing degrees, however, we each favour and predominantly use one more than the others, and one we use the least.
In the neurotypical population, and this is a generalisation, but it is braodly true, people are predominantly Auditory, a bit Visual, and only slightly Kinesthetic.
Autistics, however, and again it is a generalisation, are predominantly Visual, a bit Kinesthetic, and slight Auditory.
And when individuals don't match that generalistions it's usually only the first two modalities that are swapped (so, neurotypicals that are Visual-Auditory-Kinesthetic or, and autistics that are Kinesthetic-Visual-Auditory (I'm this later one, I think)).
Of course, you find all combinations in both populations, autistic and neurotypical, but as I said, it is a generalisation that is broadly correct.
This is why, as I said earlier, I can often sturggle to define the meaning of a word verbally, because I can 'feel', and sometimes 'see', the 'shape of the meaning' of the word, but can't verbalise that.
altruistica said:Tom really struggles with any English work that involves creating from scratch a story or a piece of prose, whereas a piece of comprehension is much more manageable because it's more analytical.I also think the idea of 'a dog has four legs, as a table does, therefore a dog is a table' is an important concept. The lack of imaginative play that has been documented in the past, must revolve around the 'need' for the same input to give the same output.
I also think the idea of 'a dog has four legs, as a table does, therefore a dog is a table' is an important concept. The lack of imaginative play that has been documented in the past, must revolve around the 'need' for the same input to give the same output.
Another generalisation that usually holds true is that we live 'in the here and now', so anything that isn't rooted in the here and now is difficult for us.
I think it's incorrect that we lack imagination, it's just a different form of imagination.
But I'm really not sure, because I can see that what I call 'imagination' is somehow different to what neurotypicals call 'imagination' but having never experienced neurotypical 'imagination' I don't know how it differs,
altruistica said:I wonder where exactly language acquisition fits into this? Your description of 'a dog is a mammal with four ambulatory limbs' is simply beautiful in its exactness. Where does this description come from? Is it a learned thing?
No, it's very much not a learnt thing. Again, this is another generalisation, but we are analytical systemizers. So a dog and a table, whilst they have a very similar overall phyiscal form, are very different things because they function, and behave, in very different ways, and have very different defining characteristics. We also like precision and dislike abiguity.
altruistica said:Do you play any instruments Scorpion?I'm going to think some more on this aspect of conversation being improvised play....whether we could use music improvisation as a spring-board to develop language areas to become more spontaneous. Do you think there is mileage in that idea?
I'm going to think some more on this aspect of conversation being improvised play....whether we could use music improvisation as a spring-board to develop language areas to become more spontaneous. Do you think there is mileage in that idea?
I don't play any instruments, though I do enjoy music.
So I don't know whether there is 'any mileage in' that idea.
Oh and that reminds me of another generalistion about the way we autistics think - we don't do metaphor! Part of me want's to write "No, there's no mileage in that idea, because an idea is an abstract concept that in and of itself does not have physical form, so it cannot contain anything, nor have dimension, scale, or distance!"
altruistica said:I'll just comment quickly on another thing that struck me in your reply. When I said about jokes, 'sharing the moment' with the other person irrespective of how funny the joke is speaks more about trying to show empathy to the other person, not just being present in the same place at the same time. It really refers to one's attentivenenss to what the other is saying. By grinning along with each line as they deliver the joke, you're actually saying (non-verbally off course). 'I am interested in you and what you say. I respect your wish to want to build our friendship and I'm reciprocating that wish by giving you my time'. That may sound very convoluted and a waste of energy if the joke is rubbish (and often it is), but it's almost a social etiquette I suppose.
On one level I completely understand that - but that is an example of something that for me is learnt.
For me, and again I believe it is generally true of people on the spectrum, the act of simply being in the same place, at the same time, doing the same thing, is all that is needed to convey 'I am interested in you and what you say. I respect your wish to want to build our friendship and I'm reciprocating that wish by giving you my time'.