 By Donna Laken
I've been angry about autism for a very long time now. I know it's not healthy, and I have several large stacks of books and CDs on forgiveness which I've accumulated over the years in an effort to work through my anger. I can tell you this, they haven't worked. I'm angry because my son's life was forever altered, due to debilitating reactions to the twenty-six vaccines he got as a baby. I'm angry at myself because I didn't appropriately research the effects of vaccines before I took him (on time, and with a smile and a thank you) to each of his well-baby visits. I'm angry at the pediatrician who recommended my son receive each vaccine in combination with other vaccines, as if any and all of them were proven to be perfectly safe. I'm mad at the nurses who injected them into my son, and I'm mad at the CDC for not conducting appropriate testing on each individual vaccine as well as testing on how six or eight or nine of these vaccines given together would affect my child. I'm mad at the school officials who required over thirty vaccines to be injected into my child before kindergarten, without knowing a single thing about their safety. But mostly these days, I'm mad at public health officials (and certain ignorant authors and physicians) who continue to persuade the media, and thereby most of society, that vaccines do not cause autism. And I'm mad at the general public for believing them, without further investigation.
I've been thinking a lot about victimization and anger lately, and my mind keeps coming back to a person I met and worked with over twenty five years ago. Right after college I took a position at a medical rehabilitation center for patients suffering from chronic pain. I had a coworker there who I'll call Greg who was a caseworker at the center. Greg was paralyzed from the waist down, due to injuries he had sustained in a car accident in which he was hit by a drunk driver. He used a motorized wheelchair in order to get around.
Being newly married and also newly transplanted to the west coast after having spent most of my life in the mind numbingly boring farmland of the Midwest, I was filled with energy and wonder and all good things one is naturally filled with when having spent only a little more than twenty years on the planet. I suppose I thought the world was my oyster, that all that I could possibly want was out there for the taking. Greg struck me as one of the most angry, bitter individuals whom I'd ever met. He never smiled, he barked out orders and demands at work, he grumbled and complained and had no sense of humor; he was just all around unpleasant. I remember thinking to myself, Man, just get over it! So you got hit by a drunk driver. Are you going to let it ruin your whole life? Forgive and forget and get on with your life! I actually thought to myself, if something like that ever happened to me, I would not let it ruin my life. I would make the best of the situation. You know, that old 'lemons into lemonade' type of thinking. I also recall seeing photographs on Greg's desk, family portraits of Greg and his beautiful wife and their two very young children, pictures of Greg playing football with his little boy, happy photos of typical family events like birthdays and Christmases. All taken before Greg's accident, all taken before he was confined to a wheelchair, all taken before he was divorced and living apart from his children.
I don't know the full circumstances of Greg's accident. I'm ashamed to say I was too self-absorbed at the time to even ask and find out. I don't know if the drunk driver who hit him was tried and convicted and punished, or if he or she even died during the accident. But I'm going to guess that whatever transpired legally, Greg most likely was left feeling that justice had not been served. After all, what sort of punishment could ever justify and make acceptable the fact that you no longer have use of half of your body, or that the overwhelming stress of such an accident could tear apart your entire family? Looking back now, it's obvious to me that Greg's anger was completely justified. One minute you're living a typical life, with a typical job and a typical family to care for, and the next minute, WHAM, you're injured and disabled and dependent, and everything you dreamed could happen is now a near, if not certain, impossibility. A person would have to be crazy not to be angry. The one who was wrong was me, insisting that Greg had no right to be angry.
More and more lately, I see this same type of complaint leveled at those of us who seek justice for our vaccine-injured children: our critics claim that we are all filled with anger, and that if we just dropped the whole idea of what caused our children's autism (vaccines) and focused instead on moving forward and just helping our kids, then our children would be far better off. First of all, to say that we're not trying to move forward is just plain inaccurate. Ever miss two weeks in a row of your favorite autism yahoo group, and then go back and try to keep up with all the new supplements or therapies that were discussed, that you have yet to try? Or just take a quick look at the list of presentations on any biomed conference brochure. Does this look like the type of material that parents would focus on if they were emotionally stalled and not moving forward with treatment? I hardly think so.
Furthermore, by knowing the cause of our children's illness (vaccine damage), we are better equipped to treat them medically in order to reverse the damage done to their bodies and thus move them toward healing. But most importantly, and this seems to be the driving force behind all our efforts to communicate the truth about vaccines, by acknowledging the cause of our kids' injuries and sharing that information with other parents, we hope to prevent other infants and children from suffering the same injuries. Why? Just because it is the right thing to do. We've all witnessed enough pain by observing our suffering kids to know that we would not wish this same type of pain on any other child anywhere, any time. It's just that simple.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out exactly why the vaccine-injured community is so angry: there is no justice being served. The doctors and nurses who administered the toxic vaccines that destroyed our children are still waking up each day and going to work and performing the same dangerous procedures on other infants and children. The health officials who established the vaccine schedules that damaged our children's bodies and minds are still going about their business as if nothing had happened. The day care providers and school officials who handed us the paperwork that required all those immunization boxes to be filled in are still handing out those same forms. My own next door neighbor, a nurse at the pediatrician's office where my son received all of the vaccines that caused his autism, still drives to the same medical office every day, administers the same vaccines to other people's children, drives back home and plays outside with her neurotypical grandchildren. I know, because I can watch this all from my living room window while my son sits inside, too terrified to walk out the front door due to the overwhelming sound of someone's dog barking halfway down the street. This woman has no regrets, she has no idea what she has done and is still doing to countless innnocent children and families. (I know because I stopped speaking to her six years ago, when she told me in no uncertain terms that vaccines do not cause autism.)
And like Greg, for whom appropriate justice was never served, we are like victims of some horrific crime. We get up every day and fulfill the countless demands necessary in order to make sure our struggling children are bathed, fed, clothed, loved, educated and protected from harm, and all the while, we are aware of the fact that the ones responsible for damaging our kids are getting off scot-free. Nothing is required of them. They don't help pay our astronomical autism expenses, they don't make sure our children receive appropriate therapies and education, they are not there to assist us during a massive meltdown, they don't step in to relieve us when we've gone thirty six hours without sleep. They don't take the slightest bit of responsiblity for what they have done, they won't even admit they made a mistake, and we can't even take them to court or sue them for damages.
Consider for a moment what would happen if our policy against drunk driving operated under the same terms as our national vaccine policy. There would be no laws against drunk driving and no way to prosecute those who hurt or killed others while driving under the influence. Local officials would simply acknowledge that at any given time, "Yep, a lot of folks out on the roads driving around will be pretty darn tanked, but hey, you're gonna have that. What are you gonna do? We still need to drive in order to get around, so let's get out there, people, and drive!" They might even offer us some scientific studies showing that they're not quite sure yet just how much alcohol a person needs to drink in order to drive dangerously or they might tell us that they just don't have any studies yet that even prove that alcohol interferes with one's driving ability.
Obviously, this sounds just plain absurd. But it is exactly what is happening and has been happening for decades now with our current vaccine program. Thousands of infants and children (and now, thanks to Gardasil, teenagers) are sustaining physical and mental injuries, sometimes even leading to death, and nobody in charge is doing anything to stop this from happening. And not only are they not preventing these injuries and deaths, but they are making it impossible for victims of vaccine injury to even seek justice or retribution for the damages sustained. They're flat out telling us that these vaccine injuries never even occurred in the first place.
No wonder we're mad; we have every right to be. And while I know they can't fix my son or bring back to me the child who he was before he was poisoned, is it so insane to wish that they would at least admit they were wrong?
Back when my son was first diagnosed and I was completely and utterly naive, I seriously thought that once the world found out the truth about vaccine damage, there would be some sort of formal apology made to all victims of vaccine injury. Don't laugh - I really and truly imagined that this would happen - that one day in the not so distant future, word would finally come out in the news that scientists finally discovered what vaccines were doing to children, and the whole world would have this "aha" moment, and would admit that mistakes had been made, and we would be compensated for our problems, or at the very least, there would be public acknowledgement and apologies made. Our kids would be seen by the world as the victims that they really are, of a medical system gone horribly wrong.
Now, after all these years of watching us beat our heads against the same wall with little effect, I'm starting to doubt that this moment will ever happen at all. Or at least not in my lifetime. At this point, I'd even settle for just a nice "I'm sorry. We really screwed up." (And of course, a promise to cease this disastrous medical experiment they call the vaccine program.) What I foresee instead is that most of us will continue to live in that ugly psychological territory in which we are enraged and bitter and angry and yes, oftentimes downright mean and unpleasant to be around. Kind of like Greg. I say most of us because I know there are saints among us who may have moved beyond this anger phase. But for the rest of us, well, in between our neverending efforts to help our kids progress and heal, until the ones who caused this disaster step forward and apologize and make appropriate changes, we're going to be a bit cranky and mad. And if we're wrong in acting this way, well, at least we're in damn good company.
And Greg, if you're out there, I get it now. I think I finally understand.
Donna Laken is the angry mother of a twelve year old son with vaccine-induced autism.
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I've been angry about autism for a very long time now. I know it's not healthy, and I have several large stacks of books and CDs on forgiveness which I've accumulated over the years in an effort to work through my anger. I can tell you this, they haven't worked. I'm angry because my son's life was forever altered, due to debilitating reactions to the twenty-six vaccines he got as a baby. I'm angry at myself because I didn't appropriately research the effects of vaccines before I took him (on time, and with a smile and a thank you) to each of his well-baby visits. I'm angry at the pediatrician who recommended my son receive each vaccine in combination with other vaccines, as if any and all of them were proven to be perfectly safe. I'm mad at the nurses who injected them into my son, and I'm mad at the CDC for not conducting appropriate testing on each individual vaccine as well as testing on how six or eight or nine of these vaccines given together would affect my child. I'm mad at the school officials who required over thirty vaccines to be injected into my child before kindergarten, without knowing a single thing about their safety. But mostly these days, I'm mad at public health officials (and certain ignorant authors and physicians) who continue to persuade the media, and thereby most of society, that vaccines do not cause autism. And I'm mad at the general public for believing them, without further investigation.
I've been thinking a lot about victimization and anger lately, and my mind keeps coming back to a person I met and worked with over twenty five years ago. Right after college I took a position at a medical rehabilitation center for patients suffering from chronic pain. I had a coworker there who I'll call Greg who was a caseworker at the center. Greg was paralyzed from the waist down, due to injuries he had sustained in a car accident in which he was hit by a drunk driver. He used a motorized wheelchair in order to get around.
Being newly married and also newly transplanted to the west coast after having spent most of my life in the mind numbingly boring farmland of the Midwest, I was filled with energy and wonder and all good things one is naturally filled with when having spent only a little more than twenty years on the planet. I suppose I thought the world was my oyster, that all that I could possibly want was out there for the taking. Greg struck me as one of the most angry, bitter individuals whom I'd ever met. He never smiled, he barked out orders and demands at work, he grumbled and complained and had no sense of humor; he was just all around unpleasant. I remember thinking to myself, Man, just get over it! So you got hit by a drunk driver. Are you going to let it ruin your whole life? Forgive and forget and get on with your life! I actually thought to myself, if something like that ever happened to me, I would not let it ruin my life. I would make the best of the situation. You know, that old 'lemons into lemonade' type of thinking. I also recall seeing photographs on Greg's desk, family portraits of Greg and his beautiful wife and their two very young children, pictures of Greg playing football with his little boy, happy photos of typical family events like birthdays and Christmases. All taken before Greg's accident, all taken before he was confined to a wheelchair, all taken before he was divorced and living apart from his children.
I don't know the full circumstances of Greg's accident. I'm ashamed to say I was too self-absorbed at the time to even ask and find out. I don't know if the drunk driver who hit him was tried and convicted and punished, or if he or she even died during the accident. But I'm going to guess that whatever transpired legally, Greg most likely was left feeling that justice had not been served. After all, what sort of punishment could ever justify and make acceptable the fact that you no longer have use of half of your body, or that the overwhelming stress of such an accident could tear apart your entire family? Looking back now, it's obvious to me that Greg's anger was completely justified. One minute you're living a typical life, with a typical job and a typical family to care for, and the next minute, WHAM, you're injured and disabled and dependent, and everything you dreamed could happen is now a near, if not certain, impossibility. A person would have to be crazy not to be angry. The one who was wrong was me, insisting that Greg had no right to be angry.
More and more lately, I see this same type of complaint leveled at those of us who seek justice for our vaccine-injured children: our critics claim that we are all filled with anger, and that if we just dropped the whole idea of what caused our children's autism (vaccines) and focused instead on moving forward and just helping our kids, then our children would be far better off. First of all, to say that we're not trying to move forward is just plain inaccurate. Ever miss two weeks in a row of your favorite autism yahoo group, and then go back and try to keep up with all the new supplements or therapies that were discussed, that you have yet to try? Or just take a quick look at the list of presentations on any biomed conference brochure. Does this look like the type of material that parents would focus on if they were emotionally stalled and not moving forward with treatment? I hardly think so.
Furthermore, by knowing the cause of our children's illness (vaccine damage), we are better equipped to treat them medically in order to reverse the damage done to their bodies and thus move them toward healing. But most importantly, and this seems to be the driving force behind all our efforts to communicate the truth about vaccines, by acknowledging the cause of our kids' injuries and sharing that information with other parents, we hope to prevent other infants and children from suffering the same injuries. Why? Just because it is the right thing to do. We've all witnessed enough pain by observing our suffering kids to know that we would not wish this same type of pain on any other child anywhere, any time. It's just that simple.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out exactly why the vaccine-injured community is so angry: there is no justice being served. The doctors and nurses who administered the toxic vaccines that destroyed our children are still waking up each day and going to work and performing the same dangerous procedures on other infants and children. The health officials who established the vaccine schedules that damaged our children's bodies and minds are still going about their business as if nothing had happened. The day care providers and school officials who handed us the paperwork that required all those immunization boxes to be filled in are still handing out those same forms. My own next door neighbor, a nurse at the pediatrician's office where my son received all of the vaccines that caused his autism, still drives to the same medical office every day, administers the same vaccines to other people's children, drives back home and plays outside with her neurotypical grandchildren. I know, because I can watch this all from my living room window while my son sits inside, too terrified to walk out the front door due to the overwhelming sound of someone's dog barking halfway down the street. This woman has no regrets, she has no idea what she has done and is still doing to countless innnocent children and families. (I know because I stopped speaking to her six years ago, when she told me in no uncertain terms that vaccines do not cause autism.)
And like Greg, for whom appropriate justice was never served, we are like victims of some horrific crime. We get up every day and fulfill the countless demands necessary in order to make sure our struggling children are bathed, fed, clothed, loved, educated and protected from harm, and all the while, we are aware of the fact that the ones responsible for damaging our kids are getting off scot-free. Nothing is required of them. They don't help pay our astronomical autism expenses, they don't make sure our children receive appropriate therapies and education, they are not there to assist us during a massive meltdown, they don't step in to relieve us when we've gone thirty six hours without sleep. They don't take the slightest bit of responsiblity for what they have done, they won't even admit they made a mistake, and we can't even take them to court or sue them for damages.
Consider for a moment what would happen if our policy against drunk driving operated under the same terms as our national vaccine policy. There would be no laws against drunk driving and no way to prosecute those who hurt or killed others while driving under the influence. Local officials would simply acknowledge that at any given time, "Yep, a lot of folks out on the roads driving around will be pretty darn tanked, but hey, you're gonna have that. What are you gonna do? We still need to drive in order to get around, so let's get out there, people, and drive!" They might even offer us some scientific studies showing that they're not quite sure yet just how much alcohol a person needs to drink in order to drive dangerously or they might tell us that they just don't have any studies yet that even prove that alcohol interferes with one's driving ability.
Obviously, this sounds just plain absurd. But it is exactly what is happening and has been happening for decades now with our current vaccine program. Thousands of infants and children (and now, thanks to Gardasil, teenagers) are sustaining physical and mental injuries, sometimes even leading to death, and nobody in charge is doing anything to stop this from happening. And not only are they not preventing these injuries and deaths, but they are making it impossible for victims of vaccine injury to even seek justice or retribution for the damages sustained. They're flat out telling us that these vaccine injuries never even occurred in the first place.
No wonder we're mad; we have every right to be. And while I know they can't fix my son or bring back to me the child who he was before he was poisoned, is it so insane to wish that they would at least admit they were wrong?
Back when my son was first diagnosed and I was completely and utterly naive, I seriously thought that once the world found out the truth about vaccine damage, there would be some sort of formal apology made to all victims of vaccine injury. Don't laugh - I really and truly imagined that this would happen - that one day in the not so distant future, word would finally come out in the news that scientists finally discovered what vaccines were doing to children, and the whole world would have this "aha" moment, and would admit that mistakes had been made, and we would be compensated for our problems, or at the very least, there would be public acknowledgement and apologies made. Our kids would be seen by the world as the victims that they really are, of a medical system gone horribly wrong.
Now, after all these years of watching us beat our heads against the same wall with little effect, I'm starting to doubt that this moment will ever happen at all. Or at least not in my lifetime. At this point, I'd even settle for just a nice "I'm sorry. We really screwed up." (And of course, a promise to cease this disastrous medical experiment they call the vaccine program.) What I foresee instead is that most of us will continue to live in that ugly psychological territory in which we are enraged and bitter and angry and yes, oftentimes downright mean and unpleasant to be around. Kind of like Greg. I say most of us because I know there are saints among us who may have moved beyond this anger phase. But for the rest of us, well, in between our neverending efforts to help our kids progress and heal, until the ones who caused this disaster step forward and apologize and make appropriate changes, we're going to be a bit cranky and mad. And if we're wrong in acting this way, well, at least we're in damn good company.
And Greg, if you're out there, I get it now. I think I finally understand.
Donna Laken is the angry mother of a twelve year old son with vaccine-induced autism.
Posted by Age of Autism at March 31, 2011 at 5:43 AM in Current Affairs , Dreams , Nightmares Permalink