Autism

[riggler]

My son is almost 5 and autistic. He's high functioning and very happy, but I worry about his future. We are getting a lot of help through the local intermediate unit and the state. Anyway, in between tantrums and everything else going on I've been trying to learn tube and circuit theory so I don't sound so stupid asking beginner questions here all the time. (I've been at it over a year...). PRR and Gus and a bunch of you other guys always help out, and it's really cool, but I'm just frustrated that I can't focus long enough to learn in a calm environment the right way. Just venting I guess!

I'm more worried about my son than my electronics knowledge. We have been trying a fish oil supplement which seems to really help his attention span. We have not had to go down the drug route. If anybody else out there has a kid with autism / pdd/nos, I'd love to hear from you. My son really likes Bartok recordings, of all things! He used to hate music, but I got him into it by showing him youtube videos of bands and orchestras. He likes copying logos and stuff like that - he's quick on computers for a 4.5 year old!

My wife bought these CDs that supposedly are encoded with Dolphin sounds that help the synapses in the brain. I think it's a crock of baloney, but who knows. Anyway, my theory is that it's impossible to put dolphin sounds on CD as the frequency is way beyond the Nyquist frequency for the sample rate.

Anyway, just saying thanks in general.

 

[MartyMart]

My sister is a special needs teacher and has been since I was in High school.
Her school was right next door to my school ( handy for a lift in the car ) and music was
always a big part of their day.
As I was playing piano from the age of 10, I would often help out with music and "sing song"
sessions at the school, it was a LOT of fun and I really felt that I was contributing to giving the
kids some pleasure and some big smiles
My sister is also quite a decent guitarist and singer herself and I very much admire her choice of career
and her selfless and positive attitude is wonderful..... she's a bit of a "one off" to me and many others also.

I know that you must have some fantastic happy times and some very concerned and down times, my heart
goes out to you and I honestly wish all the very best for you and your son.
If there is someone, even a little bit like my sister looking out for him in the future, then he will be in GREAT hands.

Warm regards,

Martin.

 

[sahib]

My son is on the autistic spectrum. He has been diagnosed with aspergers. He is 8 and he can barely write his name, but he is coming along. He is too extravert and lacks certain social rules. For example he makes friends with total stranger adults without any fear of danger.There are times it can be very tough going as somethings don't make sense to him. For example he does not understand insinuation. If he makes me very angry and I go " I am gonna kill you", he says "but daddy I'll die if you kill me". Things like that. He is not hyperactive but highly energetic.

On the other hand he has other very surprising abilities. His sense of place is remarkable. When he was five we were in Istanbul for the summer holiday. We were walking to the ferry  and I took a picture of him. The following year we were walking the same route and on the very exact spot where I took his picture, he said "daddy you took my picture here". It was shocking, we are talking about a centimeter accuracy. Again when he was around the same age we were in the car. I used to first drive my wife to her work then drop him off to the nursery. He was at the back and had his toy trumpet. We were listening to a classical music and my wife asked him to play along. Obviously the trumpet was out of tune. He played the first note then said " mummy my trumpet is not singing like that". He now has a harmonica and plays along to simple blues tunes. 

But his greates ability is on soldering.  ;D ;D He started when he was about five. So watch out. I'll be offering my board assembly services on White Market.

 

[mouse]

http://home.earthlink.net/~moriam/ANDY_INDEX.html

http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info/autism/autism.htm

http://www.findinggodinautism.com/autism-treatments.html
( ... Dr. Buttar's son overcame autism...)

http://homeopathy4autism.com/

Congressman Dan Burton...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f_s8WcfUMM

 

[Svart]

My mother is an Autism specialist in early development.  She teaches 4-6 year olds.

I can tell you that a lot of parents are willing to try just about anything to help their children, all of those special CDs, special diets, chemical therapies, surgeries, and so forth are more for the parents' state of mind than the children's health.

Now that's not to say that the children don't respond to things like audio/video but it's more because of the stimulation of music/video than any "special signals" embedded in the audio.

From her 15+ years specifically with autism I know that the physical interaction and attention paid to the child is more important to development than all the gimmicks that desperate parent's try to force on their kids. 

Another problem with autism is noted in in Mouse's reply.  There is NO cure for true autism.  Most people who "overcame" autism were either extremely high functioning and were taught to "hide" their autistic tendencies(flapping, spinning, etc) from view or were NOT autistic.

The sudden rise in autistic cases is merely coincidence because of 3 parts.  Part one is because the system for determining if a person is autistic has become much more available to the general public and less of an institutional thing.  Part 2 is because the stigma of a person having a developmental disorder has diminished greatly in the last couple decades and people are more willing to have a diagnosis made instead of pretending there is nothing wrong.  Part 3 is because autism is such a truly hard diagnosis to make correctly that since it became a mainstream diagnosis a lot of other disabilities are mistakenly lumped into autism when other diagnosis can't be made.  Speaking of this my mother has seen a drastic increase in the last part in the last 5 or so years.  She estimated that roughly half of the initial children in her last class were diagnosed incorrectly and when she had them re-evaluated they were found to be disabled in other ways.

There still is no foundation for the "vaccines gave my kid autism" excuse that a lot of parents use.  It's coincidence that the age of the vaccinations are roughly the same for the onset of autistic symptoms.  The age, roughly 18 months to 24 months, coincides with rapid brain development in regions that are not active during the 0-18month range but quickly override the primal part of the brain(the 0-18month part) after the 18-24 month timeframe.  At the point of switchover is when autistic symptoms arise.  Most true autistic persons have a change in their skull structure at this time too which has found to put pressure on certain developing parts of the brain.

More on this later.

 

[sahib]

Because of obvious reason we came to learn about these things. However, the autistic spectrum is apparently so wide that no wonder if there is no other diagnosis the autistic is slapped on. My son is completely normal  in the sense of his functioning. A lot of my friends disagree with me that he is autistic because people think of autism as being like Dustin Hoffman in Rainman. There are millions of people out there whom we normally consider as "normal" are autistic in some way.

My son's problems are two folds. First one is his reading/writing, and the second is his lack of certain social rules as I mentioned above. His use of language in verbal communication is perfect and way beyond his age. Quite often he comes up with sentences that you go "wow", but letters and numbers don't make much sense to him at the moment. Slowly but surely he is coming along. However, I noticed a very interesting thing. He is quite confused with the pronounciation. For example they are taught C as "small kah" and K as " big kah" as sound. Then poor guy sees cinema and goes "kinema". Try to explain the damn thing.

 

[SSLtech]

The CD's with Dolphin sounds etc...

Search Bill Mueller's posts over on PSW, because he has done A LOT of research into this; in fact over 10 years ago he contacted me with reference to the 'Dolphin-sounds' CDs...

Anyhow, he really has done quite a bit of research, and apparently the pattern of 'stacatto' (sudden, transient-like) bursts apparently helps to catch and hold the attention of SOME (though not all) kids with certain attention related problems... -Atleast, I THINK that's how it works...

It's not a 'cure' and not a 'solution', but it's a way to investigate, I think.

Anyway, I have much respect for Bill, and I might suggest a search to see if anything there offers any insight or inspiration.

-If I've got anything wrong, it's because I'm misinformed or under-informed.

-Keith

 

[Svart]

Autistic children LOVE sounds that are loud and quick, they also love sights that are busy, colorful, have geometric shape, etc.  Repetitive stimulation of the senses links neurons in autistic children just like it does in normal children but generally above a certain age most normal children are relegated to desk jockey duties and are no longer exposed to such things but children with disabilities are usually taught in a more personal setting which helps keep them interested.

My mother has been given children that have come from highly prestigious autism schools and have shown no advancement in those clinical settings.  She has brought them into a more personal setting where each child gets specialized attention from a teacher and several helpers where they move though subjects that are all based on sensory perception. Although she is bound by law to teach the normal school subjects of science, math, english, etc, a majority of these children will never fully understand them but she forms them into personal lessons for each child while still including them all in a group.

One other thing that I failed to mention before is that a lot of parents are extremely busy trying to force their child into a form of normalcy which only seems to push them away from where they should be.  A common example is that a child my mother had in her class was about 5 years old and had never actually been around other children before.  This was an only child and he was diagnosed at an early age.  He was then moved from personal teacher to specialists to medical facilities and was never allowed to be unattended nor was he ever exposed to the outside world for fear of "scaring" him and other such nonsense.  He was subjected to medical treatments like those described in Mouse's reply and even went through surgery to remove part of his skull that was thought to be pressing against his brain.  He showed little to no improvement through all of this and actually regressed slightly.  He was moved into my mother's class during a period of time between classes at a prestigious school for disabled children in this area.  He was present in her class for roughly 6 months and showed improvement in most areas with nothing more than personalized attention without all of the strict results-based clinical testing, exposure to other children and animals and above all else, that personalized attention was accompanied by treating him like a little boy instead of someone who needed to be "fixed".  The parents actually chose to keep him in her class where he stayed for 3 years during which time he was potty trained, learned to use limited sign language and learned to sit in his chair when asked to do so.  For a child who wore diapers and would scream and hit people before he came to this class, he was a completely different person to his parents afterwards. 

This is something I feel strongly about after being around these children for many years.  Most programs are aimed to "fix" autism by punishing perseverations and behavior that we don't consider normal, not actually helping those with autism live better lives.  You can't "fix" autism and there is no smoking gun solution no matter how many people jump on the different blame bandwagons like vaccinations.  What we can do is take the time to learn these children and adults and help them individually because what works for one doesn't work for another.

 

[SSLtech]

RE: forcing kids to conform to 'normalcy'

Watch this video of Sir Ken Robinson if you have time...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

Keith

 

[Jonte Knif]

If you haven't already read them I recommend books by Temple Grandin. One can perhaps get more perspective into autism in general and the books are just fascinating anyway because she has the "privilege" to be autistic herself. She learned to talk at the age of about 6. In this perspective it is quite extraordinary that she has been able to build a substantial career. Regarding loud noises and colorful moving pictures she has something important to tell. For example a screen saver makes it impossible for her to concentrate in anything else so if she teaches somewhere all screen savers have to be turned off. She also has hypersensitive hearing and suffers from loud noises. I haven't yet read the newest book, but it is about sensory problems in autistic children. I'll get it soon. In general she thinks (and not only thinks, she has convincing theories) that you don't cause autism, some are born with it, and you can not cure it, but you can greatly help autistic people when you know what it is about and how they think or don't think.  Well, Wikipedia will tell you more about her. Just my humble recommendation.

-Jonte

 

[MagnetoSound]

RE: forcing kids to conform to 'normalcy'

Watch this video of Sir Ken Robinson if you have time...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

Keith

Wow, what great delivery - and brilliant, too!

 

[PRR]

> it's impossible to put dolphin sounds on CD as the frequency is way beyond the Nyquist

Dolphins make sound within human hearing. If they also make sounds above our range, who cares? We don't understand them anyway.

Dolphins may be "autistic", by human standards. They don't sit and read electronics books for hours, for example. Low attention span? Or just smarter than us?

I won't say "baloney" on the idea that some people can connect with low-passed dolphin speech. Brains is brains, patterns is patterns. Every one (man or dolphin) is the same only different. If the too-rigid pattern of "normal human" speech and thought does not suit your kid, maybe the dolphin pattern is more his way. And of all the expenses of raising a kid, "normal" or "special", a stack of CDs is among the least. And if he hates the sound, maybe he will like the reflection in the sunlight, or busting them in half.

As sahib implies, we are all autistic to some degree; there is a "spectrum" which I believe extends much wider than Clinical Autism. And is not a 1-dimensional line, but more a "color space", with so-called normal in one area and multiple corners. We didn't have autism when I was young (of course we did, but mostly called weirdos, retards, spazzes); under current trends, I probably would have been Evaluated and some marks made. Instead I've been socially stupid all my life, though managing to avoid being unemployable etc.

 

[mouse]

<<There is NO cure for true autism. >>

I promised myself i would just post some links and then bail out.

...probably because i KNEW  i would hear some nonsense like this.

if one of the criterion by which we define a disease is that it cannot be cured, then anyone who is cured is what... a witch? or they never had it to begin with?

hogwash.

if you decide to give up on curing the child ( and i mean this with no hidden undertones) then behavioral counseling is a good way to go. the behavioral counselors have much contempt for people who do actually cure these kids because it is completely out of their ken and worldview. and make no mistake, kids are being cured.

the first link i posted was not about dolphin music or even anything remotely alternative or new agey. the guy has a phd in biochemistry. he is the guy who teaches doctors what they know about biochem.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

personal anecdote...

i had to read his book about 15 times. because at the time i was fully dyslexic. words and letters completely jumbled on the page. 5 years later, no signs of dyslexia whatsoever. cured. period. i had to read about 30 other books to wrap my head around the solution. and i went down about 50 wrong roads before finding the right one.

many people do not believe i had it, because DYSLEXIA CANNOT BE CURED.

i think dan burton pretty much hit it on the head in the above posted youtube interview. he also managed to keep his cool pretty well while talking about a highly charged subject.

 

[sahib]

<<There is NO cure for true autism. >>

I promised myself i would just post some links and then bail out.

...probably because i KNEW  i would hear some nonsense like this.

if one of the criterion by which we define a disease is that it cannot be cured, then anyone who is cured is what... a witch? or they never had it to begin with?

hogwash.

No, this is not a nonsense. However, I don't think I heard the diagnosis "true autism" from the child sychologists that we work with. It is a very wide spectrum and wherever you fall within that spectrum you have true autism. However, what I agree with what Svart says is that some degree of it can not be cured but can be managed. I am truly happy for you that you were able to make that leap and got on the other side, but I know a few intelligent people who have not been so lucky. 

I don't think there was any suggestion that one should give up on curing the child but on the other hand I do not believe in all that dolphin noise mumbo-jumbo. But as riggler also indictated there are times you'd try anything. In fact I have just come back from a meeting with our child psychologist with new strategies, but included no snake oil. It is a long way and you take one step at a time. I have been very methodic all my life so I am kind of prepared for it. But I feel lucky at least my son functions normally and shows progress on most of the things he lacks.

 

[strangeandbouncy]

Hi Guys,

  I hope it is appropriate for me to post here, since I have no personal experience of Autism. This will change next week, as we are holidaying with my old buddy Glen and his 3 kids, 19, 8 and 6yrs old. The 8 year old is autistic. He is delightful, according to his Dad.

  I do think that you have to define the concept of a "cure" for something that has a very wide spectrum indeed. If I have rabies, and I visit a doctor, receive treatment, and no longer have rabies, I am cured. There is no such thing as a sliding scale of rabies. There is of Autism. Also. who is to say that Autism is a disease, not a condition? I am sure that at the more "normal"(how else can we describe it?) end of the spectrum, many of us lie un-knowing and undiagnosed. There is so much we don't yet know about the human condition, especially with respect to behaviour, conditioning and genetic inheritance.

  I am delighted to read mouses last post, but I would politely point out that the mention was of the cure of Autism, not Dyslexia, though I do take his point that in general society thinks of dyslexia as incurable. Mouse, Please understand, I mean no offense. Some Dyslexics can learn to read and write, overcome their own barriers. Does this they are no longer dyslexic? I personally don't think so. Just more adapted. Many of my dyslexic collegues and freinds have learned to read, but still consider themselves dyslexic. Some are openly proud of it, others will do anything to hide it. My former boss is profoundly dyslexic, yet went on to score a good degree in English, and have a very successful career. I am the only one who knows, and he is very proud of that!

I would love to know if Dyslexia and Autism are linked at all.

 I hope I am not going off topic, but having said that I have noticed over the years that working in music, I work with a vastly inflated ratio of both left handers(I am a southpaW myself!) and dyslexics, and I can only comment that both groups display many similar characteristics. The ability to exclude all other influences, and concentrate absolutely on one thing and one thing only, for instance. I often wonder if there is a link between the two, and perhaps mild OCD. (I am certain that I am slightly Obsessive/compulsive myself). I find that confronted with a problem or a point of view, I instinctively will know how a dyslexic person will fell and act, even though I an not at all dyslexic. We understand each other on a different level. Not so right-handers. NOT a scientific observation I  know, but a considered one at least. I Also often wonder about links with autism. I am well aware of the extraordinary talents of some people with autism. Talent also has a wide spectrum, and I do feel that there must be some considerable overlapping . . .




  ANdyP

 

[rodabod]

My friend is on the Autistic Spectrum, and used to be a little like Sahib describes his son when he was younger. He used to talk to anybody, didn't know when to start, when to stop, and when to avoid saying something inapproriate.

Anyway, he's 24 now, and he's a lot better than he used to be. In fact, I'd maybe go as far to say that it's not really noticeable anymore.

He has a job, and plays in bands as what would be the most technically skilled bassist I've ever seen. He now just needs to stop listening to (so much) Mark King, and then all will be fine.

 

[Svart]

I'm not going to get into it with Mouse because I've done enough of it over the years to have learned that there are truly some people that think "training" can somehow cure a genetic disease..

My mild form of diabetes, can I cure that if I just try hard enough?  What if I don't eat sugar for a while, am I cured?  No, the symptoms go away because I avoid overeating sugar but if I went and ate a whole tub of ice cream my bloodsugar would again be whacked and I'd be in trouble.

Controlling symptoms IS NOT a CURE.

I do take his point that in general society thinks of dyslexia as incurable. Mouse, Please understand, I mean no offense. Some Dyslexics can learn to read and write, overcome their own barriers. Does this they are no longer dyslexic?

This is my point exactly.  You are learning to make things make sense through adaptive thinking.  I had a friend with bad dyslexia.  He "overcame" it but he still had to try much harder to do things involving reading.  It involved using types of word games in the form of "rules" about how he could use grammer to work around the dyslexia.  While Mouse would say he was "cured", everytime my friend got drunk and let his guard down, the dyslexia would overcome his coping mechanism.  We frequently had to read things for him when he was drunk.

As far as "growing out" of autism, most high functioning autistic people easily learn to overcome the symptoms of autism.  This is just a normal part of learning for them, to work harder to conform.  I've talked with a lot of high functioning autistics and they generally feel a need to learn to be "normal" and will go to great lengths to hide their tendencies.  As far as lower functioning autistic people, their realization of the world might be completely non-existent.  These are the type that will be lucky to learn a little sign language and get a small grasp on reality.  These are the type that really show that the "cures" that people talk about don't work.

I've seen the effects on kids who have gone for these "cures" that Mouse and others speak of and while some might seem to help higher functioning  children, they would have usually progressed along the same path and come to the same point anyway.  These self promoting doctors and other people who shout about their cures always have a few "cure stories" but will have hundreds or more of failures that you will never hear of.  They always blame the parents for not trying hard enough or sometimes blame the children for not being truly autistic when they most definitely are(strange that it's the opposite in the real world.).  The child I spoke of earlier went through a lot of those same "cures".  the parent's were rich and subjected him to all kinds of treatments.  He was severely autistic and didn't gain one bit of ground through any of the same treatments that are linked earlier in this thread.  This says to me that those treatments are "hogwash".  I know of at least 6 more cases just like this boy.  I frequently visit my mother's class and interact with these children all the time.  I see them all progress.  This tells me a whole lot more than some self-promoting websites or books looking to separate parents from their money by promising fake cures through sometimes dangerous methods.

 

[SSLtech]

O/T @ Roddy...

I was at R.G. Jones studios in Wimbledon when Level 42 were recording an album (the Pursuit of Accidents???) -I'd just finished telling everyone how I was a huge Mark King fan, when he walked in eating a takeout lunch.

The Studio manager said "everything alright? -Let's all get out of your way so you can get going" when Mark (through a mouthful of hamburger) said:

"No, don't bother...everyone can stay." ...(and then a moment's pause)... "Except for him with the glasses..." (pointing to me) "...-He can F#@% off!!!"

-HE was kidding of course... but of course it made everybody burst out laughing, and (naturally) they reminded me of it for months afterwards!

Mark King's pass playing incidentally is an example of what I think falls into that sudden, staccato, rhythmic 'challenge' which can hold the attention of CERTAIN TYPES of autistic minds. -There's a lot of information in there, and plenty of clever things 'encoded' into it... I think it's a point worth considering.

Keith

 

[riggler]

Wow, what a great thread of knowledge and controversy this has become!

I am of the opinion that there is a mercury / chemical relation, at least for some kids. I can say this with some certainty.

I met someone at work who has an autistic son. Developing normally up until 18 months. He got a round of shots at the doctor's office. The nurse left, needing to get another shot. She never marked the chart for the shots that she just gave. She sends another nurse back with the needed shot. This new nurse comes back in, looks at the chart, and gives the child the needed shot AND another dose of the shots he just got!!

There were phone calls, visits to the hospital, and it was determined that he would be okay, and there was no danger from this double dosage.

He is sleepy and woozy for a couple days. A week later he is spacy and irritable. Two weeks later he has stopped talking completely, and has not talked since. He is 4 now and has all sorts of issues, stemming, attention problems, and no speech at all.

There was a lawsuit filed and to my knowledge it has been ongoing between lawyers for all this time. I'm sure there was a form of settlement but I didn't ask.

My son was fine until he was about a year and a half to two years old. He used to eat. (I would even give him steak against my wife's wishes! Shhh! He loved it!)

He got a round of shots, and within a couple of weeks, would only take a bottle of milk, no more solid foods...

Now he'll only eat french fries, spaghetti, and lo mein noodles! We're working on pizza, and then we'll start with vegetables. We are in an intensive feeding program with him.

I'm not going to say that I know for sure what the cause of this could be. It could be many things. But I strongly feel that vaccines DO play a role for at least some of these kids. I would be curious to see some stats as far as non-vaccinated autistics versus vaccinated autistics.

Did the CDC admit mercury in vaccines are a cause???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh-nkD5LSIg&feature=related

We play the dolphin CDs every night!

I just got ahold of Bill Mueller and he is going to send some CDs. Thanks for that!
You guys are the best.

 

[Svart]

While I don't doubt that some vaccinations can cause issues, it is because of the immune systems of children.  Adults get flu shots and most who I know who have had flu shots get a mild form of the flu.  Children are no different.  if you give them a semi-alive vaccine and their immunesystems aren't up to snuff, which can be the case for bottle fed children instead of breast fed children, then they can get sick.  Out of the millions of children that get shots, a few will get sick and as we all know, children tend to get higher temperatures than adults and a lot of normal childhood ailments end up with fever.  Couple this with the development of the brain at this time, you can change brain development simply by applying heat in the form of fever from low level vaccination related sickness.  This is a time-proven theory.

My son was fine until he was about a year and a half to two years old. He used to eat. (I would even give him steak against my wife's wishes! Shhh! He loved it!)

He got a round of shots, and within a couple of weeks, would only take a bottle of milk, no more solid foods...

Now he'll only eat french fries, spaghetti, and lo mein noodles! We're working on pizza, and then we'll start with vegetables.

Do you have other children?  Other than a possible stomach pain from a low level vaccination related infection this change in taste is actually quite normal.  Most children go through this phase.  Do you know any kids that like vegetables?  I don't but most babies will happily eat vegitable baby food up until the age of self awareness, 12-18 months.

Again, children are not little adults.  Most parents and grown people are too used to being around other people who have learned to have rigid likes and dislikes formed through years of trial and error.  Children around this age go through many brain chemistry changes and can rapidly change their likes/dislikes because their tastes are actually changing as well.  I've known many children to eat only hotdogs/chicken nuggets/etc yet they are totally normal.  They've just attached themselves to something they like and it will pass.  My mother continuously loves to tell me the story where I would only eat grilled cheese sandwiches for like 6 months and they had to be cut into little triangles with the crust removed before I would eat.  Apparently I only drank milk with this too.

Now this is completely my opinion since I don't have any numbers to back it up but as I've pointed out, my mother works in a public school system in Atlanta.  They are bound by state regulations to evaluate every child that is in their jurisdiction and that includes a lot of immigrants.  She has seen a huge number of foreign autistic children who have never had a vaccination until they enroll in the school(by law they have to be vaccinated).  A number of which have brothers/sisters or other family members that are autistic as well.  This can either prove that autism can be spread in families which gives it a genetic background(which they've already proven genetic tendencies long ago just like any other mental disability) but also proves that the instances of autism can't be vaccinations at least in these cases.  I'd say that 75% of her class is now from immigrant families and did not receive vaccinations before.

Another theory is the autistic tendency at birth, that children will have autism but do not show signs at an early age because of of the lack of use of the part of the brain that is primarily involved in autism.  This is fact at this point but the theory is that the brain starts to undergo chemical changes which move toward the development of autism but foreign chemicals like vaccines, household cleaners, environmental chemicals like bug sprays or mold/fungus push the delicate chemical balance towards brain malfunction.

A lot of people want to blame vaccines but they aren't willing to accept that they might have actually kicked started the autism by using huge amounts of aromatic cleaners around the house and around baby.  What parent doesn't go hogwild cleaning the house to make sure that there are no pathogens for baby to get sick from?  Babies need exposure to pathogens, that's how they develop immune systems.  Lack of a developed immune system is actually a leading cause of childhood asthma, another condition that is becoming more and more prevalent as the years go by...

And no, the CDC does not have any evidence that vaccines cause any illness at all.  they simply agreed to look into the matter because of all the claims.  There are doctors all over the world looking at this and none have found any reason for any of the many different formulations of vaccines to have caused autism or other conditions.

The last point is the vaccine itself.  there isn't just one formulation of any of the vaccines.  There are many children who do not receive vaccines containing any of the mercury salts or other preservative chemicals but who later developed autism.