The last couple days have been hard for me, at least on the internet.  Another story about the notorious Wakefield study broke yesterday, and I tried to bite my tongue through tweets, posts and links that I knew weren't true.  Or at least accurate or fair.  A lot of it was coming from friends on the right, friends that have been so supportive of Lord of the Flies.

The vaccine debate just makes me really sad.  It's not debated fairly by either side, and it's such a distraction.  There is so much more to helping people with autism than talking in circles about vaccinations they've already gotten, and the eventual impact this will have on society as a whole if we don't find the source is all but ignored, especially on the right.

So I wrote a carefully worded post about it here as this week's contribution at Pundit League.  As I went to click "publish" first thing this morning I saw my twitter timeline full of Red Eye tweets from last night.  I like Gutfeld, but he's, at the very least, not telling the whole story on this.  I don't know if he had measles as a kid or what, but he spreads misinformation... often in joke form and it really pisses me off.

I don't know if there is a link between vaccines and autism, but I do know that Jenny McCarthy and co. are not telling anyone to not vaccinate their children.   I also know the vaccine link theories were never based solely on the controversial Wakefield study. It seems these things are hard to fit in 140 characters, so this is lost on twitter.  So I've spent the morning trying to correct the record as much as I can.  I've been pleasantly surprised with the response to my Pundit League post, and I've seen some friends try to correct their tweets.  A few have paid me lip service, but haven't issued any corrections.

This is Generation Rescue's recommendations on vaccinating children. It's actually very sensible and exactly what I would do if I could turn back the clock.  I would still vaccinate Jack, but I would delay some of the vaccinations a few months, and I would insist he get them one at a time.  Especially the MMR vaccine.  I would ask to have that divided into 3 shots.  I also would make my own baby food and not put sippy cups in the microwave, among other things.

I wonder if the right is lumping the vaccine issue in with climate change and throwing the whole baby out with the hypodermic needle.

I've been asked what I think causes autism.  I don't know.  I'm not a science person.  I have no choice but to defer to those who are.  If I had to place a bet, I suspect this is what's happening:

I think some people have a congenital predisposition to whatever this is.  I also think there is something in our environment, maybe something new that is acting as a trigger.  Most likely their bodies can't filter the toxins in the vaccines as fast as other bodies can.  It's probably the same reason Jack's system can't filter gluten or casein, a protein My hope is that in the near future we will be able to isolate the genetic component, be able to test for it, then the parents of children at risk more informed decisions from there.

Then the debate will probably change from vaccinations to aborting the problem way, but that's for another day.

crossposted at KillTruck

UPDATE: Melissa Clouthier (aka MelissaTweets) has weighed in. I wanted to ask her what she thought about this when it broke, but I knew she was on the road.  She's much more knowledgeable about the science and explains it so much better than I did, and agrees that the persecution of parents has to stop.