November 20, 2010

Why Conservatives Don’t Get Autism

A few days ago, Dan Olmsted at Age of Autism wrote a piece entitled, “Why Progressives Don’t Get Autism”, where he made the case that those on the left are so enamored with the idea that government can solve the problems of humanity, like communicable disease epidemic prevention via public health policies, that they fail to see the unintended consequences of these policies.

In a rare moment of self-reflective contemplation, one of the leftiest blogs on the left, The Daily Kos, admitted that Olmsted had a point.

In reading all this, I have to face that conservatives just have another version of the same problem. We are often so enamored with the idea that business and industry can solve the problems of humanity, and that free man can, with his clever mind and by the sweat of his brow, build the bright, shining city on a hill, that we fail to see the unintended consequences of these ambitions.

Our freedom to work and to own and to engage in commerce, coupled with our dedication to creation, has done some truly astonishing things. We went from the horse and buggy to the moon in less than two centuries. What other culture in the history of man has made such advances?

Progress and innovation have lifted us out of the muck and put us in climate controlled skyscrapers, where we can have pizza delivered while we watch football, and where we don’t have to hunt through the forest and toil in the garden. Which is great. Except that we were kind of made to hunt through the forest and toil in the garden. And when we get too far away from the garden, there are consequences to our health.

When “PROGRESS” and “INDUSTRY” (insert 1950’s post war pro-business, “Better Living Through Chemistry” educational film here) push us to create thousands of compounds and molecules that have never existed on this planet before, and we manufacture them in massive quantities and spread them everywhere, to interact with one another everywhere, in the air, in the water, in homes, in clothes, in foods and in medicines, what we WILL end up with is a chemical soup that WILL harm some or all people. (Any one who does not believe that this is an eventuality is just in denial or has never read Frankenstien or any of the other thousands of cautionary tales of how man’s creations return to bite him in places to which only God and the TSA have unrestricted access.) Because THAT chemical world is not OUR chemical world, the one that nurtured the human race to the place where it could begin an industrial revolution only a very short time ago.

We belong in our garden.

There are basically two camps on how we came to be here in our garden. One is that an omnipotent and loving being made us and placed us in a garden that was created especially for us and would meet our physical needs. The other is that we evolved from the garden and are actually part and parcel of it… just another flower in the garden.

In either case, we belong in our garden. But the burning desire for Free Man to claim his manifest destiny and to build the industrial utopian shining city on a hill has become such a siren song, that we have lost sight of the blessings of the garden and begun to trample it.

And as that happens, it is the vulnerable, the tiniest ones, who still need desperately to be nurtured by that same original clean, rich garden, those little ones whom conservatives really do love and strive to protect from the moment of conception… those are the ones who get hurt first. Our sweet little canaries.

We conservatives too easily forget that just because we can exercise our power and creativity and industry to build ambitious things, does not mean we always should do so. And taking a hard look at the massive damage that unwise industrial “progress” has done to the vulnerable, to those who should have also been Free Men fulfilling their destiny when their time came, but instead will, like my son, be life long dependents, or like Elias Tembenis, never live long enough to fulfill their promise at all… well it is painful and difficult for those on the right. Because guilt is painful and it is also expensive. It means learning difficult lessons and it means that progress will have to slow down in many cases and in some cases stop completely.

And the right can be a powerhouse that does not ever want to stop.

All this is frustrating for me, because autism is something that the right really should get. Because the right is supposed to be about the rights of the individual. It is supposed to be about protecting the little guy from being pushed around by the government. It is supposed to be about individual responsibility. It is supposed to be about law and order. And if you know anything about autism, you know that if we were living in a society where the rights of the individual were being protected, the government was restrained, individual responsibility was being practiced and industrial corruption was kept in check by law and order, you would have to conclude that there would be no autism epidemic, because as soon as the first child was poisoned, the problem would be addressed at every level.

Conservatives get the Laffer curve. So why don't they get that there is a vaccine laffer curve that has a peak vaccine administration rate, and when you go beyond that, health returns start to diminish? We get that making the tax rate 100% will ironically bring in 0 dollars in taxes. How many vaccines does it take to make all our children sick and dead? Does anyone notice that we seemed to have hit the top of the bell curve in the 1970s?

Our autism community has discovered that ultimate solutions don't come from the top down, but the bottom up. Isn’t that what the Tea Party is about? For pete’s sake, the Tea Party should be all about autism. So why don’t they “get” autism?

Blogs on the right like The Daily Caller, Reason and Andrew Breitbart's "Bigs" blast the waste and abuses of government and the Obama administration with both barrels, but seem blind to fraud, coersion and profiteering going on by Sebelius' HHS in the vaccine program. Even in the wake of billions of dollars wasted on a fake pandemic (that we knew was not going to be a threat as it was not a threat to the southern hemisphere during their winter - our summer - of 2009) to make and push the H1N1 vaccine on the American people. Nor did they decry the additional millions of dollars spent to get rid of the nearly one hundred million of doses that had to be disposed of as hazardous materials (because mercury containing vaccines have so much mercury that they are hazmat), because three quarters of the public didn't take the vaccine because even they knew the "pandemic" was a sham to begin with.

Big Hollywood so doesn't get autism, that they actually published a piece, trashing liberal Jenny McCarthy, for probably her only conservative view point, that the government should not force vaccines on people or lie about vaccine safety in order to maniuplate the public into doing something that might harm them for the governments subjective and self-serving idea of "the greater good". Instead of applauding McCarthy for challenging the abuses by her own side of the political spectrum, Big Hollywood belittes her fight against HHS thus giving cover to Sebelius and the Obama administration for their egregious behavior in autism, in an substance-less, ad hominem, "nuts and sluts" attack.

The only way that this could ever get published on a blog that is such a vociferous critic of over reaching and corrupt government is because the editors just do not get autism.

True constitutional conservatives should be at the forefront of autism and should completely get autism, but people claiming to be conservative represent at least half the country and yet still the epidemic rages on.

Which leads me to the overall problem of why neither side, American’s left or right, get autism.

As Liberals and Conservatives we are too enamored with our selves, our big ideas and what we can do, and we do not prize wisdom and caution and the long, long view.

We see the other side's flaws and short sightedness and corruption and disasters with crystal clarity, and we are blind to our own.

The public doesn’t understand that the vaccine program represents the WORST of both worlds. It is the pairing of tyrannical government that decides the most intimate thing in your life, what goes into your body, because it has decided what is best for you, and the cold machine of industry that cannot see lives but only sees profit, BOTH unrestrained because the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 has freed them from the system of checks and balances that our brilliant founders put in place to restrain both the evil intentions and the good hearted unintended consequences of government and industry.


The government/pharma vaccine program treats children (and adults) as if they are functionaries of a system, not individuals of value to be served by the system.

Because the individual members of the public have been reduced to the position of mere functionaires in The Program that has arisen from this ‘public-private partnership’, government and industry can literally lie, cheat, steal, maim and kill, and there are no consequences to either government or industry. The deep pockets of the pharmaceutical industry buy the airwaves and the message and the doctors and the institutions and the government itself, while the government insures that free market principles cannot work and people cannot vote with their feet and leave the vaccine program. And now thanks to ObamaCare, the federal government will fund the vaccine program, so the industry can continue to buy the airwaves and the message and the doctors and the institutions and the government itself... as the pre Vaccine Injury Act, 24 dose childhood vaccine schedule continues to mutate into a bigger and bigger monster as vaccine dose number 70 was just added this month. (Will we hit 100 by 2020?)



And round and round we go, as the canaries fall one by one, and then two by two, as their biological individuality is denied and they are given the same dose of the same shots layered on top of exposures to pesticides and dental amalgam and antibiotics and GMO's and food additives and the thousands of chemicals that live in their bodies and that their great grand parents never came into contact with.

And the public doesn’t understand that those causing the problems in government and those causing the problems in private industry are really just the same unethical bunch of people serving their own grandiose ideas and careers and egos. Julie Gerberding, the government queen of the autism epidemic, is both the head of the CDC AND the head of Vaccines for Merck. Paul Offit, the worlds chief figure head Pharma Rep, is both Merck AND CDC. They fully belong to both tribes.

And the individuals who do this horrible business are given cover when they lie and obfuscate and push for universal mandatory vaccination, damn the consequences, because each side sees them as on “their side” (government public health or industry) and fails to see that the fox is guarding the hen house and making a KILLING on egg sales.

It is time for the public to walk away from these blind and/or corrupt ‘leaders’ and embrace the garden again. We have strayed too far from it and most of us know that.

But what prevents many from doing it is one of the most basic instincts of humanity, the fear of death. We have been tricked into believing that without unrestrained government and industry to save us, we will die. We have been tricked into believing that “government science” and “industrial science” is science itself, and that scientific observation is something the masses cannot practice for themselves without these institutions (much like religion centuries ago).

Through every medium government and industry cry out to the public, “You Need Us… You Need More Of Us!” And we are seduced and frightened into believing them.

There is a wise saying, “When we make decisions based in fear, rather than wisdom, we often end up bringing about the very thing we were afraid of in the first place”.

It is time for progressives to realize that the idea of the utopia ushered in by the government has never worked and will never work, and it is time for conservatives to realize that any utopia brought to you by industry is fleeting and will ultimately become poisonous ruins.

The interesting phenomenon that shows itself in the autism community is that those families and individuals so were so blindly entrenched in either of these systems and who became injured from them, become healed as they move away from them and start using their own work and reasoning, and turning to independent thinkers, to treat “autism”. (Or asthma or allergies or diabetes or cancers or insert modern neuro-immune chronic disease epidemic here.) There is a freedom in coming to grips with the shortcomings of ‘your side’.

It is time for the public to face facts that ambitious progress by either the blind right or blind left has just as great a chance of destruction as it does of salvation. And it is time to work on moving back toward the garden one person, one precious life, one unique individual, one loving family, at a time.

And people are starting to figure that out… so the vaccine program looses adherents to the schedule, and the political parties loose partiers to independent movements, and the medical industry looses customers to natural and alternative medicine.

We are neither cogs in the government program nor grist for the industrial mill.

18 comments:

Andrea said...

This why I hat the part system. I think every man should think for himself and not have the labels of left right liberal conservative dem rep. to hide behind. I think there we be far more middle ground if we didn't have to subscribe to one side or the other in order to be accepted and or nominated... But that is just me.

Andrea said...

I meant to say "hate" and "party"

Autism Mom Rising said...

I think you just made history.

Unknown said...

Beautifully written, Ginger. Let's try to get this out beyond out own community...it needs to be read and carefully (dare I say prayerfully) considered by the people whose thinking affects the way policy is written and which projects are funded.

dugmaze said...

Great article.
The part that stood out for me was "liberal Jenny McCarthy".
I've have never for one second considered her political beliefs. Which shows how focused we are on the children.

Unknown said...

These thoughts have been swirling in my head for some time.. but I could never have so brilliantly articulated them. Thank you for this very thoughtful approach to an issue that should have no bearing on your political beliefs.

Minority said...

Excellent! I've been struggling with this too. Any ideology practiced to an extreme becomes destructive and nowadays we have ideology coming out of our ears. Time for a dose of real life I think. Slow down, look at the real history of disease and the real history of modern medicine and chemistry and see what really happened.

Let's stop pretending that babies can handle all these chemicals and a mountain of vaccines besides.

Sarah Pearce said...

Great, great blog. I say these things all the time, my friends think I am paranoid. Everyone lines up for every vaccine they can get up here, I will be sharing your article with them. Thanks!

Chris said...

It all comes down to $$$ no matter what your politics are. Jeffrey Smith, the GMO-free food activist, has found that just a 5% drop in a product's sales is enough for a corporation to yank it - at least in the food industry, and the money there is very big, just as it is in pharma. When parents (and doctors) become fully aware of what is actually in vaccines, what independent data actually show about efficacy (or lack there of), and their true injury rate, only then will parents stop handing their children over for more jabs. I honestly think the last thing to focus on is getting a political party or our government to get this - it will never happen. Parents have to lead. We hold the money in our hands. When we stop buying vaccines - whether it's through our health insurers or not - it's over.

Unknown said...

I agree. As a mad liberal, I am amazed at how many conservative friends I have. That's because autism doesn't discriminate. It effects families with liberal, moderate, ultra-conservative, apathetic, etc beliefs. I agree that Conservative politicians in general fail to understand autism, as they have a history of not supporting bills that would provide insurance coverage for traditional therapies. However, both liberal and conservative legislators continue to endorse the mainstream view that vaccines are the best way, regardless of the cost to our children. When will both sides wake up?

J.Benson said...

Very well written. I feel you conclusions on the basic problem of polarizing political factions is spot on. We think far too much of ourselves and too little of others or the long view. Nicely said indeed!

Partners in Recreation. said...

Ginger - do you have that vaccine schedule comparison chart available as a document? It's one of the clearest and objective examples I've seen and would love to have it to share. Thanks!

Unknown said...

Hey I found a great resource for information on autism as well as therapies, check it out:
http://www.centerforautism.com/default.asp

Bobby said...

Why is everybody so quick to link autism to vaccines? I have not seen any research linking the two. All the research I see focuses on genetics and the development of the brain, are researchers afraid to study vaccines to find a link? I enjoyed reading this blog, but I am curious as to what links there are between vaccines and autism.

Ginger Taylor said...

Great questions.... but much bigger questions that I can answer in a comment here.

Start with HHS Vaccine Injury Compensation Table which lists the symptoms of autism (loss of eye contact, not responding to anything but loud shouts, being so disconnected from the world around them that they don't seem to recognize family members, often accompanied by seizures) as the symptoms of vaccine induced encephalopathy caused by the MMR and DTaP. http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/table.htm

Read about the Hannah Poling case where the government paid her for her vaccine induced autism http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/search/label/Hannah%20Poling
Know that Hannah is not the only case of this, but that Madison Hiatt and Baily Banks and many others with autism have also been ruled vaccine injuries and paid by the VICP.

Note that only ONE of the 16 vaccines on the schedule (MMR) has been studied to see if it has a relationship to autism (Except for ONE study on Hep B which found a huge link) My son regressed after his 18 month shots. DTaP, Polio, Hep B, Pnumo and HIB. Docs said, "it was not the vaccines". I went home and started doing the research and found that no research existed for them to base their opinion on. Docs just declare vaccine innocent, no proof, and you are not allowed to prove otherwise. And again... no court to sue in, so whatever the medical establishment says... goes.

Take a look at the links in the right sidebar of this site. Start with watching the head of the CDC tell Dr. Gupta on CNN that vaccines can cause autism in children with mitochondrial disorders, but that vaccines can't cause autism.

Look for the link in the side bar that says "No Evidence of Any Link" and read 40 studies that support the vaccine autism causation theory. Including research that shows that thimerosal causes mitochondrial disorders, and research that shows that boys who get the Hepatitis B series beginning in the first month of life have triple the chance of developing autism.

Read the post called "Why the Disdain" to see just how bad and nonsensical the research is that the government uses to exonerate vaccines from autism causation.

Ginger Taylor said...

And yes... untold millions has been spent on genetic studies... and they have found almost nothing. For decades they have mapped the human genome, they are done, and guess what... no autism gene. The genetic camp is so despirate to keep the public sending them more millions to keep up the bad work that they make huge deals over finding that show almost nothing. Last spring... front page news that they found that genetic additions and deletions were higher in people with autism. What they didn't mention was that they were found in 4% of people with autism and 2% of people with out autism.

Another trumped study proclaimed that like 62% of people with autism had a genetic anomaly, but articles never mentioned that around 60% of typical people had it too.

And what happens in almost all of the studies you read about that end, "someday this could lead to a treatment for the disorder, is that as soon as someone tries to replicate the findings, they can't. It was just random chance. But the press does not mention it.

Fact is... and it is getting harder and harder for vaccine injury deniers to get away with... is that the evidence is building that autism is largely a toxic injury (with other sources) and that vaccines are the biggest bolus dose of toxins that a baby gets. And primates that are given the childhood vaccine schedule have changes in their brains similar to children with autism.

You can watch the Senate hearings on it from last August http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_id=1ab3cf42-802a-23ad-4a3a-686da83bf6d0

Or you can watch Harvard Pediatric Neurologist Martha Herbert talk about it to the Maine CDC Autism Conference last year.

http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2009/07/maine-cdc-autism-conference-genes-and.html

So there are some genetic underpinnings or susceptibility to toxic injury, but a genetic link has been found for less than 5% of cases.

There is a ton more, but that is a good start if you want to really dig into this question.

And thanks for the questions. It is great to have earnest people asking why so many people believe there is a link, because the evidence that there is rarely makes the news.

Email me if you have specific questions.

And yes... researcher are terrified of finding a link and they work very hard not to find it.

Phil said...

This was a really good, well-thought out and well articulated piece.

Krytyka Szczepień said...

You should also include the criteria for encephalopathy according to WHO:

- for MMR it can happen up to 12 days after vaccination
- one of the criteria is " distinct change in behaviour lasting one day or more."

here the source: http://www.wpro.who.int/internet/files/pub/116/41.pdf