Can vaccines cause autism? In this age of exploding levels of autism and chronic disease, are childhood immunizations to blame? What are the real dangers of vaccines, and can you trust your pediatrician’s recommendations to keep your child safe?
It is every parent’s nightmare. A normal, bright, healthy infant, brought into the pediatrician’s office for his regular battery of vaccines, leaves forever changed. He develops a fever during the night and won’t stop screaming and crying. In time, the joyful, sharp, attentive look passes from his eyes and is replaced by a dullness and lack of eye contact. He has moved from our world into his own, a lonely place from which we cannot rescue him. It is the world of autism.
Most American parents line up at the pediatrician’s office and follow the recommended vaccination schedule without question. Even careful moms who read the label of every cereal box do not question the injection of multiple bacterial and viral antigens, combined with potentially hazardous preservatives, into the bodies of their children. Unlike the cereal, which must pass through the defenses of the digestive tract, a vaccine bypasses all normal routes for immune defense and goes straight into the child’s tissues to his bloodstream, with ready access to his major organs. What happens when it gets there? Are vaccines really as safe as the doctor would have us believe?
What’s in a Vaccine?
Vaccines, designed to prevent disease, cannot work without injecting a person with some form or quantity of the pathogen that actually causes the disease. These microorganisms are grown in a laboratory. While bacteria can be grown on agar, viruses must be grown in real, living animal cells. These cells may be derived from the tissues, organs, and fetuses of monkeys, chickens, hamsters, cows, and other animals. The contamination of these animal cells with other animal viruses has long been a concern. In the 1950s, it was discovered that some polio vaccines were contaminated with a monkey virus called Simian Virus 40 (SV-40), which has since appeared in human cancers. More recently, alarm was raised in Europe when polio virus vaccines were produced from the cells of cows possibly infected with Mad Cow Disease.
The harvested bacteria and viruses are bathed in a combination of growth factors and other chemicals which enable them to grow faster. Afterward, the pathogens are attenuated (weakened) and then considered incapable of causing active, acute disease. They are purified, filtered, and combined with other chemicals, stabilizers, and preservatives into an injectable vaccine. Perhaps the most infamous vaccine preservative is thimerosal.