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Pastimes : Alternative Medicine/Health -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LLCF who wrote (97)	8/10/2000 3:10:31 PM
From: LLCF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 357

But I was moved by her anguish, her private suffering, and I relived for a moment my own struggles since Connor's diagnosis. The long nights of guilt I felt as a mother, constantly wondering what I had done wrong to give him autism; the long days of research to find a cure -- the doctors told me to put him in an institution, but I wasn't going to leave him; the countless doctor visits and tests Connor bravely endured without understanding why he was hurting or receiving little relief. And finally -- unsurprisingly -- I was overwhelmed with rage. I felt it building within me and it was like nothing I'd experienced before. I knew very clearly at that moment that I had crossed over to the other side, that I was convinced my son was a cash cow for an industry that tested its products in production rather than the lab, motivated by $2 billion per year in profits, no different in its potential for corruption than any other industry. There were no higher standards in medicine than in any other business -- the rule of caveat emptor applied to vaccines as surely as it applied to any other consumer product. I could not trust the FDA and the CDC to protect me from pharmaceutical companies that wanted to get their products to market with as little testing as possible and to promote the repeated use of their products in order to maintain their monopoly under the guise of the public good. I don't have a medical degree, but I have learned how to be a thoughtful medical consumer. Connor's up for his mandated boosters next year. I know now that he can have a simple blood test of his antibody titers, which measures his antibodies and confirms that he has the protection he needs against disease. I had the blood test done and he's protected. There's no medical exemption from these boosters in my state for "sufficient protection based on antibody titers," so I'll have to use a religious exemption instead. I've accepted that there is no binding contract between me and the agencies and companies that purport to protect my child. But my bond with Connor remains, my responsibility as his mother expanding to include advocacy -- even activism -- along with love. salon.com \| Aug. 2, 2000 DAK