Autism and Vaccination
(and some common childhood illnesses)
Disclaimer: Families should consult with their pediatricians/developmental doctors to learn about their views, opinions, and medical advice. You may also search the web for general and scientific literature about vaccination and autism. The views expressed below are not based upon any formal scientific evidence and should not be construed as medical advice or opinion in any form by anyone; these views are gathered during discussions with families of autistic children, from personal reading, and interactions with other practitioners and may be just unproven theories. People do not have to read, follow, or agree to any of the contents of this section.
I believe autism is an Acquired (not congenital – as some people think it as an absence of social skills presenting during early infancy) Speech, Language, Social, Learning, and Behavioral Disorder (Acquired SLSLB Disorder) in a child who is developing normally and within a short period of time comes to a halt – rather major standstill – in the development of the speech with consequent social, behavioral, and learning issues. At the point of halt, speech/other mental developments nearly stop; so, when the child becomes say 3 year old his mental development is equal to the age at which the insult occurred (usually between 15-18 months of age but in some children as early as 8-10 months).
No one knows for sure why some children develop autism; there are many theories and views about possible causes but none proven one way or the other. Most conventional medical literature indicates that autism is a multifactorial disorder with lifelong suffering and cannot be treated. As of now, for all practical purposes, the allopathic literature has “concluded” that vaccination is not the reason for autism. The hope is that someday, someone will uncover the true underlying reason for autism followed by effective prevention and/or treatment.
Most autistic children seem to have absent/very poor registration and/or processing of auditory impulses in the brain as the functional issue. Without proper processing, they cannot analyze the information received and, therefore, cannot respond to it verbally resulting in major expressive and receptive speech and language deficit even though their hearing as well as the peripheral speech system is anatomically all normal.
They have some basic visual registration and therefore they can learn and execute what they are told by visual means such as teaching icons and their function on an iPad. But there is a major lack of visual processing as well in most autistic children.
Significant deficit in the auditory and visual registration/processing makes learning extremely difficult. In addition, poor auditory and visual processing makes them unaware of what is going on in the outside world (similar to a deaf child) and therefore they “live in their own world” and are unable to initiate/maintain social interactions.
With major speech, language, social, and learning deficit, a frustrated autistic mind is unable to accomplish most age-appropriate tasks [that he/she wants to do] resulting in behavioral issues.
Everything else that happens in autistic children, such as social withdrawal, learning disability, behavioral disorders, etc., can perhaps be explained due to a halt in the normal development of speech. These children, more or less, continue to act as infants with speech, learning level, and behavior of an infant because their speech and mental development got halted during infancy.
Autistic children do not learn much meaningful anything forward to the point of insult, they do things like an unlearned child does – mostly childish things and things that a 16-18 month old child will do since that is when something (most likely a load of vaccines within a short period of time or administration of a specific vaccine such as DPT or MMR in a developing brain in some susceptible children) happened that adversely affected the chemistry in certain part/s of their brain.
Ill effects from DPT vaccine may explain why so many autistic children never develop speech, or have delayed speech, since DPT vaccination is usually completed by 7-8 months and speech usually develops about 8-10 months of age. That makes some people think that autism is a “congenital” disorder manifesting during early infancy.
So, it seems that primarily the DPT and MMR both may be responsible, individually or combined, in causing disturbance in auditory/visual processing resulting in delay/halt in the development of speech noted at about 16-18 months of age in most autistic children and at age 8-10 months in some other.
Vaccination ill effects as the cause of autism may also explain why in some children who escape ill effects of DPT and develop normal speech until age 12-15 months, suddenly lose their acquired speech and come to a halt within 2-4 weeks after MMR vaccine is given – typically at 12-15 months of age. Loss of acquired skills may indicate some disturbance in the neurotransmitters in an otherwise structurally normal brain and peripheral organs due to some acquired insult/disease rather than a “congenital” condition.
Insult from DPT is worse than with MMR vaccine because it does not get recognized until after 1 year has passed since until age 18 months most parents and pediatricians think any delay in speech is just a normal variation in the speech development and with advancing age the child will start talking when he/she is about 2 years old. Because of failure to recognize the issue, the insult from DPT continues from age 3 months (when most babies get their first DPT vaccine) until age 2 years without any intervention and the child ends up getting significant speech delay because of prolonged period of untreated auditory processing deficit that results from DPT vaccination.
Children who develop autism due to insult from MMR vaccine may have a little different presentation. Most children in this category develop normal speech and other developmental milestones until they are about 12-15 months old. Nothing abnormal or unusual is suspected about their speech or social interaction. Most parents provide a clear history of rather sudden (within a few weeks) loss of acquired expressive and receptive speech, social skills, and other learned behavior after MMR vaccine is given. With everything going smoothly and normal in brain structures and function, this sudden change most likely indicates as if there is a sudden loss in the functioning of some neurotransmitters responsible for of auditory and visual processing without any structural damage to the brain. Like many other theories about causation of autism, this is another view based upon observations during treatment of autistic children.
Many parents and pediatricians believe that boys generally talk late and waiting even up to 2.5 years of age for boys is an acceptable option without worrying much about the speech delay. I do not agree with this view; I believe that the delay is real – not just a “normal variation”, and this group of children are fortunate to get [late] spontaneous improvement perhaps because the vaccine insult was mild.
The vaccination theory (adverse effects of a load of vaccines, and/or DPT, MMR vaccine in particular in some susceptible children) may also explain many other common, medically unexplainable problems in certain children (and only in some susceptible children even within a family) such as recurrent upper respiratory tract infections, bronchial asthma, wheezing, chronic recurrent cough, recurrent otitis, recurrent tonsillitis, eczema, idiopathic urticaria, food allergies, epilepsy, etc.
To the best of my knowledge, there is no allopathic treatment available for “failure of auditory and visual information processing in the brain” issue causing expressive and receptive speech delay and consequential learning disability and behavioral disorders of varying severity in some susceptible, young infants who are adversely affected by the “load” of vaccines (nearly 40 vaccines by age 2 years) in general, and DPT/MMR vaccines in particular, during the most vulnerable period of their mental growth.
Various forms of professional therapies have been recommended and are given to these children as part of overall management despite the high, and usually uncovered/uncompensated, expenses. Although some parents have reported good results from “speech” therapy especially in mild cases; according to most parents, while such therapies may help in some area such as feeding, play activities, motor development and basic learning, very little – if any – improvement is noted in the primary issue of auditory/visual processing deficit in these children with an otherwise perfectly normal brain and peripheral speech and visual organs.
Enrolling these children in a daycare environment to expose them with other same age children is important and necessary part of the management but I have not seen the “processing deficit” get better by this exposure. Most children with speech, language, learning, and behavioral disorder remain isolated and aloof within the crowd of daycare and do not benefit much despite this exposure unless the “auditory processing” gets better at the same time.
Some parents who recognize the issue early on and provide a nourishing environment specific to the needs of these children may help some mildly autistic cases overcome the insult they sustained and recover without any formal therapy or treatment. It is seen that with some knowledge, parents of an autistic child are truly the best “therapists”.
The hope with homeopathy is to see if any remedy can unblock the path of listening from the ear-to-registration/processing in the brain either choosing the remedies by principle of similarity or using remedies that are known to reverse the adverse effects of vaccination if that is believed to be a probable cause of autism.