I Know What Causes Autism…
Psst spoiler: It isn’t vaccines.
In June of 2010, I became a mom. My son was born under stressful circumstances. He had trouble breathing on his own at first, despite being born full term. My husband and I spent the first week of our son’s life in the NICU holding a newborn hooked up to monitors, oxygen and IVs. Not what I’d say anyone is imagining when they look forward to the first few days of their new child’s life. We were some of the lucky ones. Our son got to come home with us. But it made us want to do everything in our power to keep him healthy.
Over the next few months, life moved forward at what seemed like light speed compared to life before parenthood. Our boy was growing up so fast. He met every milestone they give you for your child’s development. Truly, at that young age, he was surpassing them.
There were clues to our son’s differences. He’d always been very sensitive to noise. At first, we thought this was just a startle response; he was just a baby after all, we told ourselves. Then he only wanted to eat certain foods, lots of kids are picky eaters, we told ourselves.
We could not ignore the differences once our younger child, a girl born 2.5 years after our son, started to meet what I’d call functional milestones that her older brother had not. At 3 years old she was picking out her own clothes and putting them on. Our son would spend 15 minutes putting on one sock, he seemed to get stuck on tasks and not want to move on.
Finally, after a very difficult kindergarten year, with many afterschool breakdowns and outbursts that scared not only his little sister, but my husband and I, we decided it was time to figure out what was going on. We did what I think most parents would do: we met with our pediatrician and it was suggested we have our son assessed for autism. It was six months later that we were given the official diagnosis. Our son has autism.
We were not shocked. Afterall, my late aunt had autism. My brother has autism. My cousin has two sons with autism. My husband’s cousin has a son with autism. It seemed to us that our son had inherited autism from both sides of our family.
I tell you this story because there are still people out there saying that vaccines cause autism. Scientists have proven again and again that the study that stated this idea was faulty and fraudulent. Nature has retracted the article it was published in (Nature Medicine, 2010).
However, I understand why parents are drawn to this idea. It is something that you can control. And us humans, do we ever love to be in control. Especially when it comes to ensuring our children’s health and safety. Parents want a perfect child; we are all guilty of that. It is why we would ever willingly subject ourselves to sleepless nights, spit up covered pajamas, and seemingly endless dirty diapers.
But we can’t control everything in this world. We can bubble wrap the house, but the neighbours aren’t going to be happy if we start doing the same to the side walks. We can make the best choices we can for our children. When it comes to making those choices we have experts to turn to: pediatricians. We are not alone in this labyrinth of choice.
Pediatricians help us choose which formula is best when breast feeding just isn’t working. Pediatricians help us when our babies have such bad diaper rash, diaper changes become tear-filled for both parent and baby. Pediatricians help us when our babies are sick. But what they really want to help with is keeping our babies healthy. As my pediatrician says, ‘I hope the next time I see you is at the post office and not in my clinic’.
Pediatricians recommend that we as parents get our children vaccinated. They recommend this because it is the best way to keep children healthy and to protect them from possibly deadly disease. There are risks to vaccinating, just as there are for any kind of medical treatment:
Soreness, redness, or rash where the shot is given and rash all over the body can happen after MMR vaccine.
Fever or swelling of the glands in the cheeks or neck sometimes occur after MMR vaccine.
More serious reactions happen rarely. These can include seizures (often associated with fever), temporary pain and stiffness in the joints (mostly in teenage or adult women), pneumonia, swelling of the brain and/or spinal cord covering, or temporary low platelet count which can cause unusual bleeding or bruising.
In people with serious immune system problems, this vaccine may cause an infection which may be life-threatening. People with serious immune system problems should not get MMR vaccine (Center for Disease Control, 2019, n.p.).
Those risks are scary, but pediatricians would not recommend these vaccines if the benefits did not out way the risks.
You will note that autism is not listed as a risk of having your child vaccinated. That is because your child is born with autism or they are not. As Dr. Paul Wang stated on Autism Speaks website:
Even though the outward symptoms of autism may not be apparent immediately after birth, the underlying brain differences are accumulating. Sometimes the brain can compensate to make up for the disrupted processes. Eventually though, if the disruption was sufficiently severe, the compensatory processes are no longer enough, and symptoms emerge (2013, para. 3).
My son showed signs of autism as early as 6 months old, but he was a our first born, our perfect little buddy. We thought all babies did the same things as he did. By time he was 18 months old, the signs of autism were that much stronger. This late expression of autism happens because between 12 and 18 months old is when babies start to make social leaps, our son was taking baby steps.
At 12 months is when most children get their first combined measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (MMRV) vaccine (Government of Canada, 2018). Some parents who start to notice large gaps in their child’s development compared to their baby and me group’s make a common mistake. They see a pattern when there isn’t one there. Their child was vaccinated and right around the same time, they stopped meeting milestones. Their very human conclusion is A caused B. But a bird landing on your car’s antenna the morning before your car was stolen, does not make the bird responsible for the theft. One thing happened and then another. The same goes for the timing of vaccines and the timing of autism expression.
I think feeding into this fear is that autism is a diagnosis we hear about. We can read about the struggles that children and adults with autism encounter. We can see the families with children on the autism spectrum out in public or on T.V. What we don’t read about anymore, because it happens so rarely due to vaccination, are the horrible illnesses that vaccines protect against. The World Health Organization explains how diseases can be locally eliminated through effective vaccination rates (Andre et al, 2008, para. 7). These diseases are invisible. Vaccines did such a great job that we have whole generations of parents who haven’t ever seen these diseases. I can’t blame them for being afraid of something they do see and hear about on the news versus something that is hiding just out of sight.
Let’s look at chicken pox or varicella. It is one that plenty of people argue is a mild childhood illness, and a vaccinating for it is not necessary. But as the CDC states there are severe complications even for something as innocuous as the chicken pox. These complications include pneumonia, encephalitis, and sepsis (Center for Disease Control, 2018, n.p.). Once you do read up on what can happen if your child contracts one of these diseases, it is hard to understand why someone would choose to not vaccinate their child due to a fear of autism, when these diseases can cause such serious complications, even death of a child.
My son is funny, my son is smart, my son is caring, my son is silly, my son is the bright sun illuminating my whole world. It breaks my heart to think someone would prefer a dead child, from contracting a preventable disease, than to have a child like my son, a child with autism. So, I choose not to believe that. I choose to believe that these parents are scared, and they need someone to sit with them. Someone to hear their fears. Someone to show them the true risks of their choice not to vaccinate.
References
Andre, F.E. et al. (2008, February). Vaccination greatly reduces disease, disability, death and inequity worldwide. Retrieved from Bulletin of the World Health Organization: https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/2/07-040089/en/
Center for Disease Control. (2018, December 31). Complications (Chicken Pox/Varicella). Retrieved from Center for Disease Control: https://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/about/complications.html
Center for Disease Control. (2019, August 15). Possible Side effects from Vaccines. Retrieved from Center for Disease Control: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm
Government of Canada. (2018, January 5). Vaccination results. Retrieved from Health Canada: https://www.healthycanadians.gc.ca/apps/vaccination-schedule/is-cv-eng.php?province=AB&birthdate=2019-12-01&url=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaGVhbHRoeWNhbmFkaWFucy5nYy5jYS9hcHBzL3ZhY2NpbmF0aW9uLXNjaGVkdWxlL2luZGV4LWVuZy5waHA%3D
Nature Medicine. (2010). A timeline of the Wakefield retraction. Nature Medicine, 16(3). doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0310-248b
Wang, D. P. (2013, October 11). Are Children Born with Autism, or Does It Develop Later? Retrieved from Autism Speaks: https://www.autismspeaks.org/expert-opinion/are-children-born-autism-or-does-it-develop-later
This is a blog post I wrote as part of a rhetoric course while getting my communications degree.
Next week I will post the rhetorical analysis of this post, also written as part of the same course.
