(4 pm – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Hey, everybody:
There’s a very nascent, albeit a very dangerous anti-vaccine movement that’s going through the United States right now; the so-called “link” between vaccines and autism, created by the long discredited Dr. Andrew Wakefield (who lost his license to practice medicine due to the fraudulence of the movement he created, and well he should have!.), and the former nude model, Jenny McCarthy, who clearly knows nothing about anything (including medicine and science), except to tout her figure in public, if one gets the drift.
What I find rather scary about it is the fact that the anti-Vaccine people, very much like the anti-abortion/anti-choice (supposedly) Pro-Life people, prey upon people’s fears and ignorance, and, like the Pro-Life people who want abortions outlawed altogether here in the United States, want childhood immunizations/vaccines outlawed, due to their (supposed ) link to autism.
Truthfully, other more trustworthy people have found that to not be the case. More and more research has revealed autism or ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), as it’s now called, to be a biologically-based, neurological developmental disorder (not a mental illness!), that takes hold while the person is in utero, during fetal development, well before the person afflicted with it comes into this world.
My siblings and I were vaccinated against polio, pertussis, tetanus and diphtheria, for example, when we were young kids, and we all turned out fine. What’s really scary is that the anti-vaccine people wouldn’t mind seeing the United States turn into a real third-world country, where tons of children either end up dying or being permanently disabled by such deadly diseases.
I had measles and mumps (the diseases themselves), when I was a preteen, before the vaccines came out, was in bed for a week, (I had mumps on both sides at once, which hurt like hell, but I turned out fine), and the measles in 5th grade, both of which I developed an immunity to. However, even these illnesses are more harmful today than they were, due to changes in the world and the environment, and the fact that so many parents are now refusing to vaccinate their kids because of their fear of autism, which they know nothing about, is really quite scary.
Even level-headed people are jumping on the band-wagon, which is even scarier.
The following link is here: Read it and weep…or gnash your teeth. It’s rather scary, imho.
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Any thoughts, folks?