Pediatricians call for ABC to cancel TV show linking vaccines and autism

American kids are sicker than ever - asthma (just linked to early DPT vaxes) life threatening food allergies, developmental delays ranging from ADHD to full blown autism and the pediatricians have done nothing but prescribe meds. Where's their outcry for the health of our kids? The AAP vax schedule now has over 48 vaccines before age six years 1 day. 48! http://www.cispimmunize.org/IZSchedule_Childhood.pdf Maybe that's too many too soon? Maybe AAP should be demanding studies instead of censorship? Oh, and in 1989 the AAP came out AGAINST CENSORSHIP: See the sentence, "THE AAP STRONGLY OPPOSES CENSORSHIP." Gee, a lot has changed in twenty years, eh? They seem pretty much in favor of censorship when it's their pocketbook at risk and not the record companies'.

"Rock music has undergone dramatic changes since its introduction 30 years ago and is an issue of vital interest and concern for parents and pediatricians.

Rock music lyrics have become increasingly explicit during the last two decades"particularly with reference to sex and drugs. Some lyrics communicate potentially harmful health messages. These lyrics are of special concern in today's environment, which poses unprecedented threats to the health and well-being of adolescents, including pregnancy, drug use, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (and other sexually transmitted diseases), accidents, and suicide.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) strongly opposes censorship. According to the Federal Communications Commission, the public owns the airways, which are leased back to radio and television stations that are obligated to produce programming in the public's best interest. Good taste and self-regulation by consumers, media, and the music industry would be appropriate and effective solutions."

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/83/2/314

Kim Stagliano
Mother to three girls with autism, the ugly kind, not the pretty toothpick counting kind and Managing Editor of Ageofautism.com (we broke this story.)

Good luck. No less illustrious a personage than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fallen for the thimerosal/autism urban legend, vocally and repeatedly, and even taken on the panicked and violent tone of the tabloids and websites that perpetrate the story:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/thimerosal-coverup-let-_b_4561.html

The only thing that could undo the damage would be for a prominent talk-show host or movie star to publicly espouse the scientific view. This is a full-on boogeyman, riding high on the resentment of working people who figure they can't afford medical care anyway, and scientists number among Them.

I have a mercury poisoned child, he is 85% recovered by using biomedical treatments for heavy metal poisoning (Mercury) Joe was exposed to over 200 micrograms of mercury in his vaccines. Thimerosal, the mercury based preservative was still being used in Maryland in 2004, and it is still in flu vaccines, two vaccines given to pregnant women and in alot of boosters vaccines. The message is "Stop poisoning the Children" with using mercury in vaccines and any other medical product or otherwise. The media needs to help the children. We estimate that one in three has mercury toxicity. ADD/HD, asthma, seizures, autism are symtpoms of mercury poisoning. Elaine Dow

It is also irresponsible for other shows (like Larry King Live) to repeatedly provide a forum for charlatans (specifically celebrities) on national TV dissiminating these myths. Not only are these individuals responsible for future deaths due to lack of immunizations but their motivation is usually selfserving.

FACT: More people die in hospitals than any where else, including cemetaries.
FACT: More people get a heart attack having sex than reading textbooks.
FACT: More people are diagnostised with autism, as well as many other cognitive and mental differences, since we have started looking more carefully instead of writing them off as the child being difficult.

SOLUTION: Clearly, we have to stop letting those doctors kill our children, stop procreating, and stop looking problems in our children. If you stop looking for problems, and you won't have any.

Christian,
Do you really think injecting mercury is a good idea?
Deaths due to lack of immunization will be the fault of the vaccine manufacturers that continue to put out unsafe products that injure our children, not due to tv shows.
We followed all the rules, and what did it get us? Children full of toxic heavy metals with broken immune systems and wild viruses.

Plenty of children do not get immunized. Using these kids as subjects, studies consistently come out showing no link between autism and vaccinations.

You can rant and rave about having three autistic children in one family, but that would only lend creedence to either genetic or environmental causes, NOT vaccinations.

Seriously, what are the odds you would get three doses of vaccine that just happened to poison your kids while everyone else in your neighborhood going to your same pediatrician did not? Explain that to me.

And are you so ignorant that you believe every single doctor is in the pocket of Merck and the other vaccine makers? I'm talking about people you grew up with, people your children went to college with....do you really think they want children to get autism? Do you think they're hiding information about what these vaccines really do???? If that's the case, you have some serious psychological problems.

The biggest reason these crazed theories come about and abound is because their are sick babies to pull everyone's heartstrings. It's impossible to know which babies were SAVED by vaccines, so there is no pulling of the heartstrings on that side of the battle. If there were a way to definitively know who was saved and how many familes and human beings and doctors and teachers and Presidents and brothers and sisters have benefitted from vaccinations, these people would never even dream of attacking vaccinations.

There was an episode of "ER" that ran several years ago, in which a young child died of measles because his parents chose not to have him and his siblings vaccinated, citing fears of autism. The fallout from the infection was dramatic; though it started with one young boy, it stretched to his classroom, where everyone needed to be detained until properly vaccinated or re-vaccinated, then to the ambulance that carried the boy to the hospital, and subsequently carried a seriously ill and immune-compromised older patient, finally all the way to the ER itself, waiting room and all. Though the episode did not delve into the public health nightmare that such an outbreak would inevitably create, the isolated effects on the boy’s family were, obviously, profound. Please allow me to reiterate: the boy died due to his infection. Measles could have been easily prevented with a simple vaccine. The short message was that vaccines are important. Really important.

We can probably all agree that no matter how hard Hollywood tries, entertainment television is inherently fictionalized. Furthermore, we cannot stop people from getting their “facts” from sources like “Eli Stone” and “ER.” With this in mind, it is only responsible for the AAP to call attention to the issue at hand. At the very least, it will initiate a conversation outside of the sensationalized Hollywood media, which hopefully leads to some discussion grounded in actual facts.

In the long run, I’m always going to take my medical information from my doctor rather some celebrity. Hopefully the rest of America will do the same. Just think, if we all took health tips from Hollywood, we’d be having debates over vodka shots, not measles shots.

The study is being hailed again by the medical-industrial complex as yet another reason to believe that all vaccines are perfectly safe. The experience of many parents of vaccine injured children, and the massive number of claims pending in the national vaccine injury compensation system attest to a different reality.

Unfortunately the (very) general public and the (very) general media are satisfied to take a glancing blow at the issue, while just beneath the surface there's abundant reasoning to doubt the conclusions so quickly given in this story.

Two researchers (Robert Schechter and Judith Grether) informed the medical community this month that "the estimated prevalence of autism for children at each year of age from 3 to 12 years increased throughout the study period. The estimated prevalence of DDS clients aged 3 to 5 years with autism increased for each quarter from January 1995 through March 2007. Since 2004, the absolute increase and the rate of increase in DDS clients aged 3 to 5 years with autism were higher than those in DDS clients of the same ages with any eligible condition including autism....The DDS data do not show any recent decrease in autism in California despite the exclusion of more than trace levels of thimerosal from nearly all childhood vaccines. The DDS data do not support the hypothesis that exposure to thimerosal during childhood is a primary cause of autism."

Even the author of the California study acknowledges the autism increase, then sweeps it away.

We need to see what the autism (and various other neurological disorder) rates in California are in 2010. By then, the most vulnerable segments of the population will be out of the neurological woods.

The medical-industrial complex refuses to conduct methodologically sound basic scientific research into the biological effects on immune and brain function of infants and children injected with multiple vaccines containing a host of toxins and altered genetic material. Yet they're quick to enrobe themselves with their white coats and slam any question or concern, even so far as to attempt to suppress a fictional account that - sadly enough - mirrors reality.

Why?

So if the California study shows that autism has continued to rise since the mercury preservative was removed, then maybe we should put it back in.

Seriously, if we don't use scientific methods to evaluate medical claims, then we are no better than the superstitious people in the dark ages, burning witches because they thought they made the milk turn sour or caused infants to die of disease.

Kim, thank you for the work that your organization does and for getting the message out.

Willie, those of us who question the safety and neccessity of vaccines don't think that all pediatricians are evil puppets of the pharmaceutical industry (that's what the CDC is for). I'm quite sure that the last thing my pediatrician wanted to do was perhaps contribute to my son's ADHD, or her own son's learning disabilities. I believe that she is sincere in her belief that the CDC-mandated vaccine schedule is in the best interest of individual and public health, is perfectly safe, and that to not recommend that schedule compromises the health and safety of her patients and the community. It's what she has been taught and what is reinforced in her profession day in and day out. Additionally, the compensation for herself and her practice is tied to vaccination rates - insurance companies reward those whose patients obediently vaccinate on schedule and penalize those whose patients are less compliant.

The problem with pediatricians and conventional medicine at large, though, is that much of what they learn IS in fact influenced by yes, large pharmaceutical companies who make a lot of money off of vaccines and medications. Naturally, there are very clear, strong ties between the AMA, AAP, teaching hospitals, hospital groups, medical schools, the CDC, the FDA, and the pharmaceutical industry. The current vaccine schedule makes little sense. Why do infants whose mothers do not have Hepatatis B need to be vaccinated against this soon after birth? Is my newborn going to have sex or shoot up with a contaminated needle? Why the heck are we vaccinating against chickenpox, especially when we have no idea whether or not the immunity will last until adulthood and there is evidence of needing "booster" shots along the way due to outbreaks among vaccinated children? The development of new vaccines appears to be a search for new markets and revenue streams and not a response to rampant, deadly health threats. Tinkering with the human immune system should not be done lightly, and certainly not for profit.

We can't deny that there is "something" going on with the health of our children. In every community, the number of children who require special education for documented learning disabilities and health impairments such as ADHD is rising, at great cost to both the children who struggle to learn (and will likely face life-long, similar challenges in the workplace) and the community who must pay for extra teachers and resources to help these kids. Many of these kids have no history of learning problems in their family, have a healthy diet, are active, etc. This is not a lifestyle issue. The number of kids with asthma, allergies, rheumatoid arthritis, mood disorders, type 1 diabetes, and other "systemic" conditions is and has been rising in the past two decades. There has to be something going on, something changing, that can account for these problems. Vaccines are a logical suspect.

If the CDC and pharmaceutial companies are so darn confident that vaccines are 100% safe and have no link to any of the health issues affecting so many of our children, then where is the large-scale comprehensive study that will put these questions to rest? Where is the huge double-blind placebo study conducted over many years? Why were vaccines excluded from the large CDC-sponsored autism study that is going on now? The vaccine question isn't just about Thimerisol and other preservatives, it's about the vaccines themselves - the ingredients, and what trying to fool the immune system does to the body. For example, one study of autistic children found the vaccine strain of the measles virus in the guts of 85% of these children, much higher than what you find in the general population...the measles is related to neurological function...perhaps in some children, the body reacts differently to the vaccine than the vaccine makers intended and it's the vaccine itself, not the preservative, triggering neurological damage. This issue has been brewing for at least 15 years...if the pharmaceutical industry and the CDC want to put it to rest, commission a large, independently-audited study and let the results stand on their own merit. If there is a link, then parents and doctors will have more information to make informed healthcare choices for their children. If there is no link, then we can focus our questions and efforts in another direction to try to figure out what's going on with our kids and stop it.

The human body and mind are incredibly complex systems and certainly hold some mysteries that science and medicine have not figured out. The arrogance behind a "one-size-fits-all" approach to anything in medicine, especially something as complex and poorly understood as the immune system and brain, has no place in medicine or public health. We must make room for humilty and inquiry, there must be room to say "it seemed like a good idea at the time but now we know better." Nothing less than the lives, and quality of life, of a significant percentage of a whole generation of children is at stake.

The AAP should let entertainment entertain and focus on the damage it's arguably well-intentioned policies is doing to the children its members have dedicated their lives to caring for.

The pharmaceutical companies and the government health agencies continue to poison Americans through flu vaccines that contain toxic levels of m ercury, eight long years after the Department of Health and Human Services placated those concerned with false assurances that thimerosal would be removed from vaccines.

This is nothing less than genocide, and the main stream media and the AAP are complicit.

Why would doctors still be beating this dead horse.
Thimerosal damage will persuade parents to avoid vaccination only in the event it is still used as a preservative.
It is not.
Thimerosal is therefore is no longer a deterrent to vaccination and parents know this.
These doctors are just creating a smoke screen to prevent big Pharma liability.
A referendum on herd immunity is a fear based (not science) excuse that no longer applies to a vaccination system free of thimerosal.
Eli Stone can proceed as scripted.

Since the effects of diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, measles, shingles, and HPV are known and devastating, it's not ethical to withhold vaccination to perform a randomized controlled double-blind study, and a registry study (where you just follow people whose parents refused to have them vaccinated) is too "noisy" (full of uncontrolled variables) to be meaningful.

Mercury poisoning is definitely a problem, and has at least in some studies been linked to autism. It has also been observed to be remarkably high downwind of coal-fired power plants:

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2004/nov/science/rr_mercury.html

Just as this isn't a reason to revert to the nuclear power age, fears over a discontinued preservative aren't a reason to eschew vaccination and go back to pre-industrial rates of infant mortality.

Yes, pharmaceutical companies are dangerously immune to law. But so is the power generation industry. Let's start there, with accountability all round.

The kind of mercury that is in thimerosal is NOT the kind of mercury that's in polluted water, fish, etc. Different compounds.

When people have accidentally been exposed to megadoses of thimerosal (industrial exposures, etc.) they have gotten tunnel vision, dizziness, they start having a hard time moving their lips and tongues to form words. Nothing like what happens in autism.

And what happens at lower doses? Nothing. The lowest dose that has been found to create any adverse effect on human beings is about 1000 times greater than what's in any vaccine.

Some people just can't accept reality. Get over it, mercury moms.

Willie,a study was done comparing vaccinating and non vaccinated children and the results did indicate a vaccine autism connection

The creation of vaccines over the past century has been the most successful and important medical breakthrough in history. Many of these illnesses, most of us have never even seen use to kill children every day. Unfortunately, irresponsible "advocacy groups" and media outlets looking for a big story have unfortunately, continued to spread these scientifically unproven myths. Vaccines do not contain mercury anymore. Thimerosol has been removed from all childhood vaccines with the exception of the flu vaccines. Yet, the rates of autism continues to rise. Most of the rise is due to increase awareness, better screening, and changes in the definition of autistic spectrum disorder. Clearly there are other factors in play as well, but blaming it on vaccines is not the answer. I have seen a young child dying the hospital with pertussis and from pneumocal and hemophilis influenza meningitis. The choice to not vaccinate is not a risk-free choice.

In response to the writer who stated that pediatricians only promote vaccines for the benefit of their pocket book, please investigate your claims before you make them. Giving vaccines is a money loosing service. It costs far more to purchase, administer, store, and document the vaccine then any insurer or government pays us. We do this for the health and well being of our patients and of society as a whole.

I feel so badly for the many parents I see each day who are so confused and so worried about making the right choice. They want nothing more then to do what is best for their child and now have to choose between trusting their pediatrician or the latest celebrity they saw on Ophra. It is not fair to them. ABC and other mass media should be more responsible.

Amen to #7.

I don't believe the physicians administer to make money, they just don't realize the truth. They are very busy and probably don't have much time to do serious research on the subject, or aren't inclined to......unless it hits home one day.

Research has shown that the rates of pertussis, and the like were already declining before vaccinations were introduced, and in fact continued to decline in other countries that did NOT introduce or mandate vaccines. The guess is that it may be due to the fact that people began to eat healthier, with more of a variety in their diet due to the refridgerator, and more imports/exports, etc. Also a more modern society is a cleaner society, with clean drinking water, etc.

At this time noone can state that while thimerosol has been removed, autism rates continue to rise, because not enough time has passed to prove, and it wasn't removed suddenly, but over a long period of time. Some companies did it sooner than others.

Now they are using cadmium, and time will tell what damage this will do.

Frankly, it is common sense to recognize heavy metals such as these do not belong in the body.

And there is evidence proving that children that aren't vaccinated don't have asthma, and autism, etc. Check into the omish and mennonite societys. There is no 1 in 166 rates going on there. You can't throw that evidence out the door, (unless you just don't want to be wrong.)
I think Willie is not a very nice person to make light of a mothers trauma of having 3 children with autism.

I do think the media should be more responsible in this case. At the same time, I would hope that parents would not base their children's vaccination decisions on a fictional t.v. show. I'm still not convinced vaccines cause autism, but I do think it's possible something in the vaccines (whether that's mercury or not) may trigger the onset of autism in someone who is genetically predisposed to it. There is an excellent debate about this very topic at www.opposingviews.com/questions/are-autism-and-vaccines-linked Experts from both sides debate the issue, and a guy named Kevin Leitch is really taking on the groups who believe autism and vaccines are linked. Really great read!

Let's get down to it. These companies who make these immunizations as well as other drugs, are the ones behind the curtain, pushing the drugs through the doctors. I personally feel that we shouldn't medicate as a prevention of a desease unless there is an epidemic in the area of which the person lives. Medicate for the sickness you have only after you have it diagnosed and know what the sickness is. I am one of those parents with four children from ages 19-30 who never received immunizations. Compared to other children their ages who did get vaccinated, my children were healthier. They never got any type of sickness other than an occational sniffle when they were outside barefoot in the winter. Go figure.

How come I never got poisoned from immunization shots?? I'm guessing the majority of the people dont have bad outcomes from immunizations. I think people sometimes take the media to the extreme......believing everything. I mean there was a time people thought using deodorant was bad for you........and coffee is bad for you.......it puts extra fear in already fearful people----

Hi

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