Musings on vaccines and autism

(originally written in January of 2009)

My son, David, was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome at age 5. David was born at home. He got no vaccines until 6 weeks of age. Nevertheless, he exhibited autistic features from birth. He arched away from me when he cried -- from birth. He cried to be put down, within a few days of birth. He preferred to be carried facing outward, rather than tummy to tummy, within a few weeks of birth and before he received *any* vaccinations.

Later on he developed other symptoms, but none that I could trace to vaccinations.

After David was diagnosed, I was able to observe autistic features in other family members. My father-in-law was obsessed with trains. My mother-in-law preferred to talk to strangers rather than family members. Both were clutterers, apparently having an attachment to objects. My father did not like to be touched and had very flat affect. My mother had extreme depression and anxiety and did not seem to have close friends. My brother was nicknamed "no talk" in college because he was so reserved. I think my ex and I have autistic features also.

My second son was later diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome as well -- though not in response to any sudden change in behavior after a vaccination, but instead after years of not being successful in socializing.

Anyway, I feel persuaded that autistic features are inherited in my family.

I have a friend who has a profoundly autistic son. He believes that his son's autism was caused by vaccines; however, I have doubts. I notice that my friend himself exhibits autistic features: poor prosody, flat affect, inability to co-regulate by walking side-by-side on the street, obsessions, peculiar sense of humor. I suspect that my friend does not want to deal with thinking about his own autistic features and would prefer to think he is normal. This contributes to his belief that autism is caused by vaccines.

I was intrigued by the story of the little girl in Texas who developed autistic symptoms after receiving FIVE shots in one day. This makes me think that shots, which are painful and frightening for children, may provoke autistic withdrawal in an individual who is predisposed to such withdrawal, i.e. who is already autistic. I suspect that such individuals might well have withdrawn later anyway, but certainly the stressful and inhuman practice of giving a small child five shots in one day would have a tendency to cause a person predisposed to such withdrawal to withdraw in a more dramatic and marked way.

I have one friend who was profoundly autistic as a child, but who has come out of it. She could not speak intelligibly until she was 11 and could not reliably produce full sentences until high school. She could not speak fluently, i.e. without rehearsal, until age 48.

She told me an interesting story of her own autistic withdrawal, which she could remember quite distinctly. She was riding a bus at age 3 and overheard two men talking about their "dresses." She was quite frustrated by this, because she knew that men did not wear dresses. She made a decision, which she still remembers, not to listen to people, because they did not make sense. Only as an adult did she realize that the men must have been talking about their "addresses."

Clearly, the decision not to listen would also preclude speech -- but, equally clearly, only a person with a predisposition toward autism could make such a decision. A neurotypical person, with a stronger desire to associate with others, would make a more concerted effort to figure out the puzzle of why men were talking about their dresses, when she had never seen a man wear a dress.

This event of hearing this puzzling conversation was obviously a much less stressful event than getting five shots in one day. A person who was probably going to withdraw anyway, would, it seems to me, be more likely to do so after getting five shots in plain view of -- and possibly held by -- her primary caregiver who she was trusting to protect her. Such an event might persuade a child with autistic features to make a decision not to communicate further with the caregiver who betrayed her. The child might have made this decision for idiosyncratic reasons later anyway.

This girl might have been exhibiting autistic features before, but that might not have been apparent to her parents. My mother-in-law, seeing my son arch away from me when he cried, as a newborn, told me he must be angry at me. I was not persuaded of this at all. I knew that newborn babies only have conscious control over their mouths. It did not seem to me that my son was angry. It seems to me even less that way now. It seems to me that arching away from Mom when crying is for a newborn only a symptom of neurological dysfunction.

The child does not know that this behavior is going to result in him being put down. The child does not know that being put down is going to result in him being deprived of neurological stimulation, i.e. stimulation from being carried and cuddled, that is necessary to development, health, and even life. The child does not even know he is crying until several months of age.

My pediatrician never screened for such behavior in newborns. When I called my mother and asked her if it were normal for a newborn to cry to be put down -- i.e. to stop crying and be happy as soon as put down -- she thought it was normal. She was wrong, of course. Neurotypical babies do not normally prefer to be put down. Neurotypical babies normally prefer to be held.

If a child's pediatrician does not warn the parent that the newborn is exhibiting autistic features, it may seem sudden if the child withdraws after a shot, even though the child might have been buildling toward an autistic withdrawal for some time.

What would seem most helpful to me here would be to give much earlier screenings for autistic features and to recommend that babies with autistic features possibly be on a different type of vaccination schedule -- possibly later, so that they might have this negative experience when they were older and better able to cope with it.

Movie review: Lincoln

I was not overly impressed with this movie.

First, the lead, Daniel Day Lewis, just did not capture my attention.  I thought he lacked charisma.  I was very conscious of the makeup.  Lincoln, for whatever reason, was a very wrinkly man. The actor chosen to play him was not.  The result was a heavy makeup job that made his face rigid and impeded his credibility.  I wanted to be riveted by this character, but I just wasn't.

I was intrigued with the way they portrayed Lincoln as being slightly round shouldered and walking with an awkward, halting gait.  I had not thought of him that way before, but it makes sense with him being so tall and thin.  He might have had mild Marfan syndrome.

Second, about the lighting:  it seemed to me as if the whole thing were done to imitate the sepia colored photographs of the day.  Everything was pale and dingy.  I see no reason to suppose that colors were any less vivid back then than they are now.

There were performances that I especially enjoyed, those of Tommy Lee Jones and Sally Field.  I've always liked both of those performers and I thought they did well in this show.   

Also I thought Gloria Reuben was good.

The first black soldier who spoke to Lincoln was good, too, but I can't figure out who played them.

Otherwise, I thought the performances adequate, but undistinguished.

Another thing that bothered me was that, despite this movie being about the 13th amendment, which abolished slavery, and therefore about freeing black people, the movie was mostly focused on white people -- and mostly male white people.   I suppose that this was accurate, in terms of how these people saw themselves and their lives, but still it does not seem right. 

I looked around the theater carefully.  This was February 9, so the movie had already been playing for a long time.  As a result, the theater was not full at all: probably not more than 30 people there -- but, of those there, only one was not white that I could see.   This was consistent with the casting.  Obviously it was a movie by and for white people.  The audience reflected that.

It seems to be quite common in movies that there are many meaty male roles, but women are limited.  Here Sally Fields had a meaty role, but most of the characters were white men.

I do feel somewhat better educated about the events of the time, which I suppose is a good thing.

Still, on balance, I found the thing not so hot.

Open letter to Senator Gillibrand re Newtown

Today I read a tweet by Senator Gillibrand regarding her support of increased control of guns.  While I tend to support this action on her part, I am nevertheless thinking that this is not the only reform that is needed.  I therefore just sent her the following twitlonger

@SenGillibrand Journalism reform is also needed.  The Supreme Court has always interpreted the constitution to allow time, place & manner restrictions on speech, particularly where there is clear and present danger of violence.

The press uses the news to sell drama.  This is a business, not just free speech.  They enhance the news with simulations, music, high drama interviews, etc.  They increase public fascination with high drama events.  This makes the news somewhat akin to a horror movie.

In the case of murder/suicides, and particularly mass shootings, the enhanced emotional reporting techniques make the acts more attractive to unbalanced people.

The law should allow only basic factual reporting of such events, i.e. a newscaster saying: "In Newton, CT today, 22 school children were killed in a mass shooting, with the gunman committing suicide afterwards," with no photos, no identification of the gunman, no interviews, no re-enactments, no drawings, and no music.

This de-dramatization of the news would make this type of crime less attractive to potential perpetrators.

Murder plot against Justin Beiber

I am really upset about the murder plot against Justin Beiber.  I am glad that it was foiled, but, still, it upsets me.

I'm not a Justin Beiber fan, but that doesn't mean I hate him.  I see lots of hate messages against him on YouTube.  Any time he appears on a video there are hate messages below.  

It's as if he attracts bullies like a magnet.  

They hate the fact that he sings in a high voice. They hate the fact that he seems a bit effeminate. These things enrage them. 

Why?

It seems to be some kind of bizarre, criminal instinct on the part of certain people.  

I note that the plotters were in prison. They say that bullies tend to end up as criminals, so I guess it makes sense that bullies would be worst in prison.

This seems to be an example of what goes on daily in schoolyards, where kids who don't match some ideal are plagued with bullying.  This has been a particular concern to me, because my kids and I have Asperger's Syndrome.  That means that we were the sort of people who attracted bullies as well.  I identify with Justin in this respect.

Somehow this basic process where people who are different get bullied  needs to be cut off, if true civilization is to be achieved.  

I notice that Tom Cruise, one of my favorite actors, seems to attract haters and bullies as well, which also concerns me.

on changing names to avoid stigma

This is a response to

http://inneraspie.blogspot.com/2012/11/is-this-offensive-weigh-in.html?showComment=1352914135354#c5395906729825076059

When I was younger, I moved to a new city to take a job.  When I got there, I was told to avoid a particular apartment complex on the grounds that the units were substandard.  I ended up living in that complex, because the owner changed the name, so I did not recognize it.

I lived there for about a year and a half.  During that time, they changed their name again.  

I am persuaded that they changed the names, so that newcomers who had not been warned would not recognize that this was the complex they had been told to avoid.  

Ever since then I have been very suspicious whenever people change the names of a person, place or thing to avoid stigma.  The stigma does not come from the name.  The name acquires stigma, because of our feelings toward the thing described.  

The word "retarded" used to be regarded as kind, but acquired stigma.  Now people don't like the word and use "developmentally disabled," or some such thing instead.

I have particularly noticed this issue in reference to people of African descent in the US.  

In a song from the 19th century Stephen Foster referred to these people as "darkies."  Foster was later condemned as racist, though I don't think he really intended harm to the people so described.  His songs actually expressed affection for them.  He merely expressed attitudes of his era, not truly understanding that they were hurtful.  Nevertheless, the language he used was rejected as offensive, though, again, I do not think it was intended to be.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the word "colored" was considered polite in referring to these people.  At that era, the famous organization called NAACP, used the word "colored" in describing its own people.  That was considered good.  The word "black" was considered insulting.

Later on, the word "colored" became considered insulting, and the word "Negro" was adopted.  The United Negro College Fund used this word.  This word is the Spanish word for "black."  Despite the fact that "Negro" was at one time considered acceptable, the dread "n" word, which I dare not even type here, which was derived from "Negro," is considered obscene.

Nevertheless, people of African descent consider it acceptable to call each other by the dread "n" word, while becoming highly offended if a "white" person uses that word.  Moreover, the perfectly innocent word "niggardly," which means "stingy" sounds sufficiently similar to the "n" word that no one can use the perfectly innocent word without becoming a target of public harassment, which I find appalling.

The word, "Negro," was considered polite when I was a child, but then it became considered impolite by the time I was a teen -- after Martin Luther King, Jr., who used that word, was assassinated.

The next fashionable word was "black."  When my mom was in college, that was definitely a "faux pas" to say "black," but that attitude changed.

After "black" came "African American," which was considered more similar to "Italian American" or "Japanese American."  

The problem with "African American," was that many people are of mixed race and, moreover, it was cumbersome.

Then the term "people of color," was introduced.  This is quite similar to "colored," which was used in the first half of the twentieth century, so we have come almost full circle.

Nevertheless, I find "people of color" insulting, because it implies that people, like me, of European descent, lack color, which is not a nice thing to say.  I have color.  I am not "white."  I am beige and pink.  Moreover, I think I have a colorful personality.

I am also a member of the Religious Society of Friends.  We have a subgroup that used to be called "FLGC" (Friends for Lesbian and Gay Concerns).  After a while, some people got offended by this term, so they changed it to "FLGBTQC" (Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Queer Concerns).  I found that odd, because the word "queer" used to be regarded as insulting, but now, apparently, some people like to be called that.

I really wish we would stop renaming things on the grounds of stigma.  The stigma does not come from the name.  The stigma comes from the thing named.  Changing the name does not remove the stigma.

This is similar to the situation in my house, where the lead paint soaks through into the latex paint.  They developed an encapsulant  paint to paint over lead paint, to try to avoid this problem, but I wonder how long the encapsulant paint really solves the problem.  The poison seeps into the new words , just as the lead seeps into the latex paint.

The problem is with the stigma itself, not the name.

General Petraeus and the biology of alpha male primates

General Petraeus's extramarital affair is dominating the news today.

On the one hand, I don't like adultery; nor do I trust high government officials.

On the other hand, adultery is so very common that I fail to understand how it can be a public scandal -- or even news -- much less a court martial worthy crime.

The fact of the matter is that alpha male primates tend to be polygamous.  It's not clear to me that they truly have a voluntary choice in this.

To me, this is very similar to the issues surrounding same sex marriage.  People cannot choose whether they are straight or gay.  Similarly, I suspect that alpha males cannot choose whether or not to be polygamous.

Polygamous behavior by alpha males has been a great source of concern for females who have to share their attention -- and also for beta males who are unable to find mates, because alpha males dominate the field.  Monogamy has been a solution proposed for the benefit of females and beta males for thousands of years; but, clearly, it does not work.

The definition of insanity is doing something over and over and expecting different results.

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Addendum:

Some afterthoughts on 11/14/12

Today I am looking at some of the other behavior of Bradley, namely bizarre anonymous e-mails to Kelley & bringing home large quantities of classified documents.

It appears that she does have some issues of judgment.  Having an affair with a married man is also a judgment issue.

We also have to look at Petraeus's judgment in consorting with such a person, but this is a stereotypical situation: sycophants clinging to the rich and powerful for dubious purposes.

This does raise questions with respect to national security.

On the other hand, his public appearances with his wife may raise issues of national security, since people wanting to get at him might get at him through her.  In China, the private lives of public officials are regarded as state secrets, for this reason.

Nevertheless, I continue to suspect that polygamous behavior is biological, and not susceptible to elimination by public shaming and discipline.

Moreover, I suspect that secrecy and shame make the polygamous behavior more dangerous from a security perspective, rather than eliminating it.

Rather than cloaking normal, biological behaviors in secrecy, let's out the sycophants.

On legalizing marijuana

Some people assume that when I advocate for legal marijuana that means that I use the stuff.

No, I do not.

I used it twice, when I was about 20.  Both times I had exactly the same reaction.  I went to bed & fell asleep.  It seemed like a very stupid waste of time to me -- and I never liked the stuff.  

Some people who love marijuana can't imagine that there are people who don't like it.  They didn't believe Bill Clinton when he said he didn't like it -- yet it was perfectly clear that Clinton's choice of intoxicant was of an entirely different sort, i.e. female.  There were even photos of Clinton pretending to drink at parties, because he didn't like to drink, which I also don't.  There are those of us out there who don't like intoxicants.

My father found that he hated morphine when he was dying of cancer, and needed pain relief.  That was a surprise.  Morphine is supposed to be addictive, but here he hated it and was always turning down his drip.  Well, that's an aside.

So, back to legalization.

Why do I favor it?

The money used for marijuana enforcement is poorly spent, because the drug is not truly dangerous.  Why should my tax dollars go to something useless like this?

The drug laws in general provide a pretext for the erosion of civil rights, as they enmesh the government in the business of spying on the private lives of otherwise inoffensive citizens.  There are laws allowing the government to take real property if there are illegal drugs on it, for instance.

The laws making marijuana illegal make it difficult to investigate medical benefits of marijuana, as well.

For instance, my mother suffered from glaucoma.  The medications she was given for this disease were ineffective.  We never knew if that was because of her forgetting to take them, due to onset of early stages of dementia.  

At one point, she was taking 4 different eye meeds, and was still unable to control her pressure.  Each med had a different timing, once a day, twice a day, three times a day, and four times a day.  Keeping track of them was enormously stressful for her, and took up much of her attention in the last useful year of her life, before Alzheimer's became her most prominent health problem.

My mother was always a very high stress person, and i always felt that that stress was a big contributing factor in the dementia.  If she had been able to take marijuana, it could have killed two birds with one stone: the eye issue and the stress issue.

In any case, she ended up having to have surgery.  The surgery resulted in her getting herpes in the eye, which in turn ultimately made her go blind in that eye.  

The other eye went with a cataract that could not be treated by surgery, because by that time her Alzheimer's had progressed too far for surgery.

In any case, I firmly believed that if my mother had been allowed to use marijuana to control her eye pressure it would have vastly improved her quality of life in those end years, which were otherwise hugely depressing due to the dementia.   You can't imagine how furious it makes me that the government acted to prevent us from trying this alternative.

The part below is now out of date, fortunately: 
 

I am appalled that the federal government continues to try to oppose medical marijuana and intervene in the internal affairs of states who want to legalize this drug.  We need to balance our federal budget, not waste money on undermining the sovereignty of our states.

Back off Obama.  I voted for you, but that doesn't mean I like all your policies.  You're dead wrong here.  Dead wrong.