If Vaccines Caused Autism...

...which they do not, but if they did...

I want to be absolutely clear that vaccines do not cause autism. That isn’t real. The studies that seemed to point to a link between vaccines and autism have been debunked.

But if vaccines did cause autism, you should ask for a double dose.

People write me the kindest notes from time to time, saying that my writing has touched them and made their lives better. I’m always thankful for those messages; they make my day. Do you know how I’m able to write the way I do? It’s because I’m autistic.

I was diagnosed as “Asperger’s Syndrome” back in the late 90s when it was just beginning to be recognized that high-functioning, hyperlexic, hyperverbal girls could be autistic and not just nonverbal boys. And I got no help to have a normal life with “Asperger’s,” because in the late 90s they didn’t really do anything for people in that place on the autism spectrum. They just kept treating my severe anxiety and OCD with medicines that weren’t appropriate for them. As an adult, for awhile I decided that I must not really be Asperger’s and just tried to live as a chronically ill person with OCD and severe anxiety as well as physical chronic illnesses. And later, as I reached middle age, I re-visited my medical history and realized that the Asperger’s diagnosis, now known as Autism Spectrum Disorder, explained everything that was strange around me to the letter. If I treat my OCD and anxiety as manifestations of my autism, they become manageable. Autism explains everything that was offbeat about me. I am one of those irritating adults with high-masking autism of the female phenotype. And I like being myself.

Being autistic and not knowing it is torture, but learning the names for the things I experience and how to better cope with them has made life wonderful. My hyperfocus is how I’m able to sit and write no matter how distracting the room is around me. My extreme sensitivity to sensory data is why I’m able to observe the world around me and write so precisely about it. My stimming by pacing back and forth and talking to myself is how I’m able to practice my writing before I write it out. I taste the words on my tongue and make sure they are perfectly textured, beautiful words. I couldn’t do that if I weren’t autistic.

My longtime readers have all admired my friend Holly the Witch, who is so generous with the poor and so eager to help neighbors. Holly wouldn’t be that way if she weren’t autistic. One of the manifestations of autism is a black and white sense of justice. Another is a tenacious insistence on the rules we’ve been taught are right. Another is a disregard for shallow social expectations, so we just keep doing the right thing even when it shocks others. You should wish to be autistic in the way Holly is autistic.

If vaccines caused Holly and me to be who we are, I would be thankful to vaccines for that. But they didn’t, of course. We were born this way.

And yes, I know that a lot of autistic people suffer because of their autism. I do too. The OCD and anxiety that dog me every day are partly due to my unique autistic brain. My wonderful, blessed sensory sensitivity makes me want to die if I go into a building where the music is too loud or walk past a house where somebody’s dog won’t stop barking. Some people’s autism is very disabling, because we don’t have good ways to help them understand and cope with their experiences yet. Some caregivers of autistic children suffer from a whole lot of worry and terrible stress because there aren’t enough resources for them and their children. All of that is true. But in any case, vaccines didn’t cause it.

Do you know what does cause disabilities? Infectious diseases. Infectious diseases cause all kinds of disabilities.

Infectious diseases don’t cause autism that I know of, but they cause all kinds of other disabilities.

Everyone knows that polio can paralyze you or put you in an iron lung.

If you live through meningitis, you can come down with paralysis and brain damage; you might have to get a limb amputated as well.

About one in a thousand people with measles will develop encephalitis, which can cause deafness or intellectual disability. Measles can cause blindness or vision loss as well, by damaging the eye.

Mumps can also cause encephalitis and the resulting disability, just like measles.

Whooping cough can give a baby brain damage from the lack of oxygen, resulting in blindness, deafness, or intellectual disability as well.

These can actually happen. And, of course, infectious diseases can kill you. They have killed millions.

Would you really rather die than be autistic like me? Would you rather that happened to your children?

Would you really rather risk your child being paralyzed, or losing the function of their eyes or ears, or suffering severe brain damage, in ways that actually ARE entirely possible and well documented, because of an urban myth that a vaccine might make them a little like me?

That’s a choice you can make.

I hope you make the right one.