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Folks, thermisol has been phased out from vaccines, though this might not show up in your google search as consipiracy theory sites seem to dominate. Please immunize your children. If I were to place a bet, I woiuld go with body burden and a metabolic defect that that prevents the body from excreting mercury. There have been some promising studies showing lower levels of mercury in hair (excreted) of autistic children and higher levels in teeth (retained). In that case, environmental mecury may be more of the issue (given autism rates in countries that had already banned mecury in vaccines a while back are not much different). Clearly, more studies need to be done.
Also, another reason not to vaccinate is an adverse reaction to the vaccine itself... I consider this extremely selfish as you're then relying on "herd protection". Something a prisoners dilema, though. (Yikes!)
And now for something closer to home:
The Geek Syndrome
Autism - and its milder cousin Asperger's syndrome - is surging among the children of Silicon Valley. Are math-and-tech genes to blame?
By Steve Silberman
It's a familiar joke in the industry that many of the hardcore programmers in IT strongholds like Intel, Adobe, and Silicon Graphics - coming to work early, leaving late, sucking down Big Gulps in their cubicles while they code for hours - are residing somewhere in Asperger's domain. Kathryn Stewart, director of the Orion Academy, a high school for high-functioning kids in Moraga, California, calls Asperger's syndrome "the engineers' disorder." Bill Gates is regularly diagnosed in the press: His single-minded focus on technical minutiae, rocking motions, and flat tone of voice are all suggestive of an adult with some trace of the disorder. Dov's father told me that his friends in the Valley say many of their coworkers "could be diagnosed with ODD - they're odd." In Microserfs, novelist Douglas Coupland observes, "I think all tech people are slightly autistic."
....
Clumsy and easily overwhelmed in the physical world, autistic minds soar in the virtual realms of mathematics, symbols, and code. Asperger compared the children in his clinic to calculating machines: "intelligent automata" - a metaphor employed by many autistic people themselves to describe their own rule-based, image-driven thought processes. In her autobiography, Thinking in Pictures, Grandin compares her mind to a VCR. When she hears the word dog, she mentally replays what she calls "videotapes" of various dogs that she's seen, to arrive at something close to the average person's abstract notion of the category that includes all dogs. This visual concreteness has been a boon to her work as a designer of more humane machinery for handling livestock. Grandin sees the machines in her head and sets them running, debugging as she goes. When the design in her mind does everything it's supposed to, she draws a blueprint of what she sees.
"In another age, these men would have been monks, developing new ink for printing presses. Suddenly, they're reproducing at a much higher rate."
More:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html
SQT Says:
> I think you’re right in that decisions can’t be made
> anecdotally. But there has been such a huge increase
> in autism we should be looking at everything– including
> immunizations.
We have known for generations that having babies over 30 increases the odds of autism (and breast cancer) and having babies over 40 really increases the odds of autism (and breast cancer) so it is no surprise that now with more moms having kids over 30 (and 40) that we have more autism (and breast cancer)...
EBGuy,
Thanks for that article link. Humorous, but it definitely rings true...
FAB
Excellent point. Mothers are much older now so that of course could be a factor.
Don't get me wrong-- I believe in immunizations. My kids have had all of theirs and I wouldn't dream of not doing it. I think not immunizing your kids is foolish. I just worry that we don't want to look at how the medical industry is giving immunizations in a knee-jerk fashion. But then, I suppose people are protesting immunizations in knee-jerk fashion too...
EBGuy
What I find especially interesting about that article is that it makes the point that autism (and the related syndromes) may have always been around in the same numbers as now-- just without the diagnoses.
Society has become so prone to medicating kids nowadays that virtually every kid can get a diagnoses of some sort if you go to the doctor. I'd be willing to bet that if I went to the doctor tomorrow and complained that my son was hyperactive they would put him on Ritalin in no time flat. It's scary.
I am a strong believer in holistic medicine. Besides, I believe people will be a lot healthier (physically) if they can fix their minds.
That said, I think immunization has a good reward/risk ratio. Even my cats are vaccinated.
Not medical advice
Monkframe says
I find your comments offensive.
Oh that's just so precious! You show up and call us all racists, those of us who are American fat-assed ignoramuses and the US armed forces mass murderers.
You then profess to take offense that I called you a piece of shit in response to all your garbage propaganda. I can only hope your delicate sensibilities were offended enough by my uncivilized namecalling, to give you a stroke.
This was to good to pass up in light of the recent discussion:
Doerr [of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers] likes to invest in "white male nerds who've dropped out of Harvard or Stanford, and they have absolutely no social life." That's why he backed Netscape, Amazon, Yahoo and Google.
On the vaccine topic, a case was brought to federal court just today.
"Court hears claim linking vaccines to autism"
"Oh that’s just so precious! You show up and call us all racists, those of us who are American fat-assed ignoramuses and the US armed forces mass murderers.
You then profess to take offense that I called you a piece of shit in response to all your garbage propaganda. I can only hope your delicate sensibilities were offended enough by my uncivilized namecalling, to give you a stroke."
What about the American service people you profess to care about so much? 18 suicides per day out of 32 attempts AFTER they return to the home of the brain-dead "patriots" who love them so much--until they get in the way on a street corner when you're trying to get to your "steak & prawn" joint.
Yes, you do offend.
I do not understand the logic. People want to call this idiot President a Savior because he is doing something that a few individuals approve of; the logic does not hold.
The President (and conservatives) are the reasons there is a Housing crisis. If Americans could take a step back and look at what has happened over this last 30 years, they would realize that this is not the first housing mess that we have faced.
The first was in the early 80's when Ballon-payments were used as a substitute for an increase in salaries. The second time was with the Savings and Loan Crisis; lax standards.
Now, we are experiencing a third housing crisis and you what to praise this idiot (and perhpas the conservatives as well). If this is the logic that exists in America to praise someone who appears to be a Savior when he actually caused the problem with his failure to have his regulators perform their jobs, then no wonder we are in trouble.
Now, this is not to say that his position is wrong; but to consider him a Savior is a sign of desparation. No one should be judged on one act or position taken. This is the reason we are in Iraq right now.
Generally speaking, Patick.Net is the most informative site relative to this topic, but this article has gone too far. Further, it amazes me that when someone wants something and they happen to agree with the respective politician then that politician is a Savior or Hero when collectively speaking the politician, President Bush, has been a complete failure.
Lastly, this article reminds me of the guy went hiking alone and got his arm stuck in some rocks and he ultimately had to cut-off his arm to save his life and the media made this idiot a hero when he should not have ever gone hiking alone.
So please, please, please do not tell me that who ever wrote this article/post needs and wants a house this badly to consider President Bush a Savior. He may have finally did something correctly after 7 1 /2 years, but he is NO Damn Savior!!! Get a grip on yourself and stop being so one-dimensional.
@Patrick - Note, I am not trying to denigrate 2018 posters as I too like to crack jokes and fling poo on occasion. Still even when the issue isn't housing, how did the TONE of this site change from this thread to what it is now?
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President Bush disagrees with the bailout plan:
http://tinyurl.com/5924j9
Let's be real. The Iraq War might have been mismanaged, but Bush seems to be capable of making sensible decisions in tax and housing.
- Peter P
#politics