[ re 'measles and meningitis re-emerge in unvaccinated children' bollocks. see MMR vaccine failures.]
Jenny McCarthy In 'Time': I Fixed My Son's Autism
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/25/jenny-mccarthy-in-time-i_n_476881.html
25 Feb 2010
McCarthy talks about everything she's done to "fix" her 7-year-old son's autism
since he was diagnosed in 2005, in
an interview in Time.
She believes Evan's autism was caused by the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella)
shot and as previously eradicated diseases such as measles and meningitis
reemerge in unvaccinated children, some label the unsubstantiated claims of
McCarthy's camp a public health risk.
After being put through every behavioral, medicinal and alternative autism treatment in the book, Evan does appear "cured," though it's not certain he ever even had autism:
Evan's symptoms -- heavy seizures, followed by marked improvement once the seizures were brought under control -- are similar to those of Landau-Kleffner syndrome, a rare childhood neurological disorder that can also result in speech impairment and possible long-term neurological damage. Or, as other pediatricians have suggested, perhaps the miracle I have beheld is the quotidian miracle of childhood development: a delayed 2-year-old catching up by the time he is 7, a commonplace, routine occurrence, nothing more surprising than a short boy growing tall. It is enraging to the mother to hear that nothing was wrong with her boy -- she held him during his seizures, saw his eyes roll up after he received his vaccines -- and how can you say that she doesn't know what she knows?
McCarthy now supports more research into vaccinations rather than eliminating them entirely and allows for the possibility of an environmental cause contributing to the upswing in autism diagnoses. Here are some excerpts from the interview:
On hope:
"Try everything. Hope is the only thing that will get us up in the morning."
On Evan's "recovery":
"Evan couldn't talk -- now he talks. Evan couldn't make eye contact -- now he makes eye contact. Evan was antisocial -- now he makes friends. It was amazing to watch, over the course of doing this, how certain therapies work for certain kids and they completely don't work for others ... When something didn't work for Evan, I didn't stop. I stopped that treatment, but I didn't stop."
On the relationship between vaccines and autism:
"Come and see our kids. Why won't the CDC come and talk to the mothers, talk to the families? Then tell us there isn't a link."