Don’t worry. Be happy.
In 1998, when I was pregnant with Ben, my third son, I often prayed to God, “Please don’t let him be autistic.” This was because my oldest son was autistic, and pretty severely so. Nat was 8 and we were already dealing with him not sleeping at night, destroying our things and hitting people. When Ben was born, I watched for autism almost constantly. Because of Nat, we had learned that genetically our chances were one in 20. And yet my second born son, Max, did not have autism.
Still, all around me children were being diagnosed with autism. Being a writer, I started researching this phenomenon and I stumbled across the 1998 Lancet study that connected the dots between measles, leaky gut and autism. Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s findings indicated that giving your children the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine could cause autism.
At first, Wakefield’s theory seemed to make so much sense. I imagined how immune-compromised baby bloodstreams could become filled with what the doctor had called “opiate-like substances,” that caused the terrible autistic behavior of preferred isolation, spaciness and aggression. This felt so true. At the same time, it speared my heart to remember Nat getting his MMR vaccine and actually smiling at the doctor. Smiling, at the very moment that his life would change so tragically. I was despondent. I felt responsible — like I had allowed him to be given autism. My mother tried to reassure me. “You can’t think that way,” she said. “You don’t know what caused it.”
cognoscenti.wbur.org
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Volume 351, No. 9103, p637–641, 28 February 1998
thelancet.com |
