been a while

okay, so who writes their first entry then wanders off for a few months. well, i did. i am so energized for fall. that is quite backwards if you know me. i love summer, i love warmth, sun, long days on the lake, bar-b-ques, swimsuits, and carefree days. this summer has been quite the contradiction for me, but on the bright side, i am loving the crisp fall mornings, the changing hues as the sun rises and those oh so shorter days. i am focused and balanced…september has never brought much thought to me as a special month…until this exact moment.

september has always been a sense of renewal for me, back to school, which i always loved! i loved back to school shopping, i loved school, i loved new beginnings, new teachers, new students, and the challenges and opportunities for growth. as a matter of fact, i still love september. i as enter my final semester of graduate school following my first summer EVER of doing coursework, i have grown, after much struggle and fighting. in fact, i never submitted to a summer of reading and exams, i fought it the entire way.

so as i settle into my routine of working out, work, class, homework, new seasons of my loyal dramas on tv, and the fifth month of my fiance’s deployment to Iraq — i am energized!

i just watched an oprah with jenny mccarthy, thank god for dvr, but i must say i didn’t expect much when i saw the opening of this show. wow – was i ever put in my place. first of all, i love oprah, i love the platform she provides for so many individuals, famous or everyday, to share their story, their lives. so jenny mccarty, yes blonde, big boobs, was it singled out on mtv? i don’t even know, but she always disappointed me back then…never felt like she contributed much.

so now she has a five year old son, who was diagnosed with autism when he was two years old. i am quite familiar with most diseases and disorders, whether genetic or exposure driven due to my passions for biology, wellness, blah, blah, blah. but boy was i ignorant about his disease. now 1 in 150 children are diagnosed with autism and 1 in 94 boys. WOW! their is a belief and observation made by many mother’s who have children with autism, such as jenny, who hypothesize that there is an “association” between the MMR vaccination, specifically a preservative in the vaccine called thimerosal .

so….as the public health student that i am at a philosophical moment. i must research. just as i take jenny’s well-spoken, passionate account, i must also look to the best scientific evidence that we have available. the following states from a reliable and most unbiased analyses….

“The Panel, which includes health professionals and statisticians, has studied five large epidemiological studies that were carried out in the USA, UK, Sweden and Denmark. In all the studies the evidence was conclusive that children who were given thimerosal containing vaccines were at no greater risk of developing autism than children who were given thimerosal free vaccines. “

the author’s son who is now 17 has Asperger’s syndrome, which is on the “spectrum” with autism, as the community refers to it. what convince him that the disorder was NOT in fact linked to vaccination is…

“Soon after the scare (I live in the UK) many parents in England did not let their kids be vaccinated for MMR. The number of kids being vaccinated dropped dramatically for many years. As the years passed the cases of measles, mumps and rubella in young kids rose dramatically – but the number of young kids being diagnosed with autism did not fall. If the culprit had been the vaccine or mercury in the vaccines, we would have seen a fall in cases of autism as millions of kids were not vaccinated over a seven-year period – but we did not, the rise continued.”

his perspective is for the future actions and policy considerations for the rising incidence of autism is well thought out…

“I think there are so many possible reasons for the rise in autism that I have given up trying to pin point one. Here are just some factors:

– Diagnosis is better today. Asperger’s Syndrome was often misdiagnosed as Schizophrenia in the past.
– The toddler’s brain grows more quickly than other toddlers, this overloads the child with data, so everything starts to shut down. There are studies which have strong evidence that this is so.
– More premature babies are surviving today
– Infant mortality is generally lower (you need to think about this one). Babies are surviving serious diseases, fevers which would have killed them many years ago�etc.
– Allergic reactions to food additives which did not exist before and some foods.
– Pollutants. I am not sure about this one. Statistics do not indicate that city and rural percentages are any different. London had worse pollution in the fifties than it has today, but reported cases of autism is higher now.
– More pregnancies can be taken to full term than before because of more advanced medical practice.

My list is enormous. The trouble with latching on to any of these is that you could spend years going off on a tangent, wasting time and money, on something that is completely irrelevant.

What I find frustrating, is that for every group who passionately believes the cause is one thing, there is another group who think the opposite. I have been to so many meetings like this. One can lose sight of the aim, which is to give that autistic child/teenager/adult the best chance at achieving his/her full potential. Where do I dedicate my time? To my son or the cause?”

Written by the Editor of Medical News Today

this is a PERFECT example of why i am passionate about the health of the public. as an average american watching oprah, i can sympathize with the passionate account of one mother’s experience. that is her truth. yet, i cannot discount what reliable evidence from well-designed, objective research states.

BOTTOM LINE: there is a dialog created by jenny sharing her story, always a good thing. and i will ALWAYS look to evidence coupled with rational decision making to guide me.