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I'm a new puppy mom who has become well-aware of all of the vaccines puppies need and the risks of not getting them. We can't even let him walk on the sidewalk until he's had all his shots at around 6 months (we live in an area with A LOT of other dogs).

I do wonder if the people who refuse to vaccinate their kids do vaccinate their pets and whether they see the irony.

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For all this hysterical screeching about autism, one would think these turkeys might consider glyphosate (Round-Up), a pesticide that’s everywhere in the States but banned in many other countries. When I say everywhere, I mean floating in the air, dissolved in the water, worked into the soil of every square inch of the country. It kills beneficial insects in droves, causing the poisoning of fish and other wildlife. It is the one chemical I’ve seen indicated in causing autism.

The “link” between vaccines and autism stems from a paper published many years ago in The Lancet in the UK. It was never true and after an outcry and investigation, Lancet withdrew the paper and published a retraction. I can’t tell you how many times and places I’ve told this story, which you can verify from reputable sources online. Don’t take my word for it. Check it yourselves. RFK apparently never got the memo. He heard it once and never did any due diligence about it and has been prattling on about it for years in spite of the reality it was ALWAYS a scam on the part if the person who originally wrote it. He intended to scam people. It wasn’t an innocent mistake.

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Yeah, I think pesticides or things like that are likely more to blame than vaccines (not just for autism, but a bunch of different conditions). I'll never understand why they latched onto vaccines — even with that bogus study and given the fact that it's been repeatedly disproven — when there is so much actually potentially harmful stuff floating around. I'd rather they focus on that instead of overwhelmingly safe, life-saving vaccines.

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There is emerging scientific evidence of a connection between autism (as well as anxiety disorders, ADHD, OCD, various addictions...) and the gut microbiome.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-50601-7

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Autism and ADHD tend to run in families. There are a ton of parents, especially AFAB, who bring their children in for possible testing and realize they themselves need to be evaluated. So there is more awareness leading to more diagnoses. However, there are still so many doctors out there operating under decades-old stereotypes that many people, especially women, aren’t being diagnosed correctly. Hysteria might have been removed from the DSM but Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and other mood disorders are diagnosed in its place. Doctors to this day will dismiss you entirely for making eye contact, shaking hands, having a large vocabulary, being in a relationship or otherwise exhibiting a capacity for love, understanding metaphors, having a job, the list goes on and on. Getting a formal diagnosis is also expensive and time-consuming. Not everyone has those resources.

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The only comfort I have right now is that every person Trump has picked to carry out his agenda is a universe's worth of Dunning-Krueger effect reduced to a human-shaped singularity.

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Holy shit

My uncle was sent to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded in the 40s...I'm not kidding. I think it was called something else by the time he went there, but this was the organization that the Nazi's LITERALLY looked to for their eugenics theories/justification...Again LITERALLY. He was also involuntarily sterilized, as were many of the 'residents'..

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That is so horrifying.

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I, too, have spitballed about rising incidence of various diseases, and I, like RFKJ, am not a doctor - or indeed a scientist of any kind - so I, unlike RFKJ, always offer the disclaimer that I have no idea wtf I’m talking about.

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I am a scientist, or used to be. Let's look at Type-2 Diabetes. In 1970. you weren't considered "diabetic" unless your fasting blood sugar was >240 Then the criteria was dropped to >200, then >160, then>140 then>120 now it is down to >104. so of course there are many more "diabetics" in need of pricy drug therapy.

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Maybe my insurance will cover Ozempic after all!

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>> It’s true! Autism diagnoses have increased since the MMR vaccine first started to be widely used in the 1970s — but it’s not because of vaccines or because of chlorine. It’s not because of anything especially fascinating. It’s because there’s simply more awareness of it, because the diagnostic criteria has changed to include a wider spectrum of behaviors. This awareness has led to parents being more likely to see signs and bring their kids in for testing. <<

Not that different from how steadily increasing numbers of trans people visit doctors, get diagnosed, and receive gender affirming medical care.

One very interesting thing to note, though, if one is interested in correlates as potential causes, the more right wing fuckfaces decry trans existence, the more trans people come out and seek care.

So I invite the choose-your-own-research crowd to shut the fuck up for 30 years and see if maybe we can return to 1994-levels of out trans participation in society.

You never know. It could work! Worth a shot anyway.

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Use the Trump method. Just stop testing for it. It will go away!

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He was never a big fan of tests. Passing them always cost him money.

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PL94-142 was the Special Education Act signed into law in 1975. Before that time there were no formal requirements to help kids with disabilities. Thus no testing for things like autism!!!!

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Autism is caused by old farts like him impregnating women.

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Perhaps this asshole should pay attention to formaldehyde poisoning instead:

https://www.propublica.org/article/formaldehyde-epa-trump-public-health-danger

Short story, we are being poisoned by it.

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Ta, Robyn. Sigh.

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Being Autistic the thought of Brainworms "investigating" this subject, fills me with disgust.

I came by being Autistic the old fashioned way. I inherited it, my family is stock full of Autistics.

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Ditto ditto. Back in The AGO, my family had no idea that an autism spectrum exists, of course -- I ar Old. BUT they did have a fair=sized representation in both sides of the fam, so when people ended up with kids who would now, in these sloghtly more enlightened days, be tested & recognized as falling somewhere on the spectrum, they just shook their heads and said, "Aaaah -- OK, another one! "

But then, they were extraordinary people. They did not, as seemed to be so prevalent around them, just label a kid "slow" or "learning disabled" or "mentally off"--and under no circumstances was a kid just reflexively pitched into an institution and forgotten about.-- they actually sought out the nearest University (10 miles away) for best helps. In the late-middle of the twentieth century, that was rare as hen's teeth.

And a big YEP on heredity. It shows up in families: I have 3 biological children, and two are spectrum-ish; no surprise there! Son's little girl is flat-out autistic...and a hoot. :)

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I grew up in the 70s & 80s, and I am old as well. Noone in Bumf**k Wyoming knew WTF an Autistic kid was. I remember thinking as a child that the rest of the world was crazy. The only time I didn't think that was when I was around my Autistic family! In conclusion, f**k Bobby Brainworms and his "research", give him an Etcha-Sketch and sit him in the corner.

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Never underestimate the stupidity of these wackadoos. Last week I read of a GBS- positive woman in labor refusing prophylactic treatment with antibiotics because it's so rare for newborns to be affected by maternal GBS that it's not a real risk, it's just Big OB/Big Pharma pushing antibiotics. She refused to understand that it's rare now because the vast majority of GBS+ patients get antibiotics during labor because they don't want their babies to get sick and/or die! She denied the facts and reality to match her beliefs.

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The old "It's not raining now, so I can throw this umbrella away."

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More likely RFKJ will take a page from the FL surgeon general (or whatever his title was) and just dry-lab the data to support whatever conclusion he wants. He is most emphatically not a true science guy.

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There have BEEN trials paid for by the anti vaccine lobby, because they didn't trust any research paid for by Big Pharma et.al. They were convinced that THIS, a truely independent study with no need to please Big Pharma Vaccinating Masters, would reveal The Truth. It did...it found no link between vaccines and autism.

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Some clown bought a $20k laser ring gyro in an attempt to prove that the earth does not rotate. Guess what -- it showed that the earth actually, uh, rotates.

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Yeah, if they want to do the zillionth study on autism and vaccines, it's not going to cause any additional harm. The answer is already well beyond rational dispute. But you cant evidence someone out of a belief they didn't evidence themselves into. And it's such a waste of everyone's time, expertise and money.

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If I ever spend $20k on a laser ring gyro, it better have some sexual function.

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