Vaccines don’t cause autism, but the lie won’t die—in fact, it’s getting worse
arstechnica.com
Vaccine misinformation persists as measles cases are soaring.
  • Godort@lemm.ee
    1682·
    6 months ago

    Im almost positive that Andrew Wakefield has caused more harm to modern medicine than any other person in the last 200 years.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
      32·
      6 months ago

      I’m getting tested for autism as an adult next week. If it turns out I am, who do I contact from the Autistic community? Or does a representative contact me? I don’t want to mess this up and I have a costume ready and everything.

      • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.netEnglish
        15·
        6 months ago

        I tried to think of a witty response to your funny joke but I’m apparently too tired for that, so instead, I’ll wish you good luck for next week, and the weeks that follow it; getting a diagnosis as an adult is often cathartic in the short term, liberatory in the long term, and in between those points is a long period of introspective untangling a web of messy feelings and possibly internalised ableism. I wish you the strength to endure and to emerge with a better understanding of who you are, regardless of the outcome of the assessment.

          • RIPandTERROR@sh.itjust.works
            3·
            6 months ago

            Jesus fuck, you need kinder people in your life. I hope you find affection at every level of your needs. Proud of you for seeking growth and self awareness. I have high hopes for you and best wishes.

      • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        5·
        6 months ago

        Can you tell me your secret? I’ve been waiting 8 years for an adult diagnosis. It doesn’t really matter in the sense that I know I’m some flavour of ND, though. And I work in education, and people around me have been pretty accepting.

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
          41·
          6 months ago

          Secret? I don’t even know if I am neurodivergent, I am getting tested to figure it out, I have taken a dozen online tests of various efficacy and they all come up “borderline” so I am getting a professional diagnosis. It may also be a very strong case of CPTSD mimicking the effects of autism and/or ADHD.

          Otherwise, I have been struggling my whole life with things that should be a lot easier for me, and if I DID have a secret, all my best successes and largest achievements have been a result of pushing myself out of my comfort zone and pushing into more challenges, not listening to my reasoning because my reasoning is flawed, our brains just tell stories to explain how we feel and those stories don’t necessarily have to make sense, it’s just stories to make you feel like the world makes sense. It doesn’t.

          Understanding nuance of people’s feelings and emotions was always hard for me, so I pushed myself to lead more, to be a team leader or a project leader, and put an emphasis on instead of retreating from giving everyone personal attention, I leaned in harder always and have always made a policy to listen and genuinely be compassionate to others and exercise empathy.

          I also pushed myself to do more public speaking and leading lectures, MC’ing social events, and giving speeches when appropriate.

          In my last job I was afraid of failure because I have been laid off so many times in the past, so I paid careful attention to that worry about messing up, and every time I had that worry I did the exact opposite of what my gut was telling me. I got laid off from that job as well anyway, because that’s how business is now, but not before becoming a general manager and well-liked by hundreds of people.

          The number of times I’ve put myself in trouble by resisting the “Safe” route is not insignificant, but each of those times has been easily navigated and more than rewarded by the successes which were a result of speaking up when I would normally keep quiet.

          So your secret should be to value yourself. Even if you don’t feel it, act like it. Pretend you are valuable and important and people will treat you like you’re valuable and important.

          • dan@upvote.au
            4·
            6 months ago

            This is a great comment but I think by “secret” they meant in terms of getting an appointment for a diagnosis, since they’ve been unsuccessfully trying to get one for a while.

            • ameancow@lemmy.world
              1·
              6 months ago

              Gotcha, remains to be seen… doctor hasn’t been very affirmative with me about what exactly we’re doing next week, I assumed from his language it would be a diagnosis/test but they say frequently it’s all “more complicated” than we tend to think, so the reason some people might have a hard time getting a diagnosis is because particularly as you get older a lot of conditions and symptoms kind of blend together and make certainty much, much harder, and it is sometimes more efficient to just focus on managing the symptoms no matter what the underlying cause may be.

              I guess I’ll find out and try to update others as I go through the process.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
          2·
          6 months ago

          Apparently you haven’t been vaccinated enough. Double up on your shots and you’ll make it fir sure

        • mokus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          2·
          6 months ago

          I’ve got an appointment in a few months. No idea if you’re in the US but, if so, the secret is the same as everything in American health care - money, debt or navigating insane bureaucracy to get insurance to cover it. And, in my case, also traveling a long way to a place that does adult evaluations and scheduling the appointment nearly a year in advance.

      • Cursed@lemmus.orgEnglish
        318·
        6 months ago

        The fact that you have a shred of humor in your system means you aren’t autistic.

    • PrepareToBeLetDown@lemmy.world
      8·
      6 months ago

      I make this joke every time I get a vaccine. I ask them if it’ll make me extra autistic and for how long. I’ve never gotten a laugh.

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
    792·
    6 months ago

    There’s a correlation between wearing socks and athlete’s foot. Socks cause athletes foot, clearly, and so we shouldn’t wear socks when wearing shoes.

  • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world
    711·
    6 months ago

    It’s because there is no punishment for spreading false information. These cunt celebrities and politicians spread their fucking lies and if they are found out, they make an empty apology that reaches 1% of the people that they lied to, and it’s all forgive and forget. Fuck all of that. Every anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-education cunt out there needs to be strung up from the societal rafters. They have to be made an example of. At the bare minimum they should be doing tours helping to correct the lies they have spread, spending time on social media and running commercials like fucking community service hours. There has to be a punishment for this shit.

      • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world
        20·
        6 months ago

        Ideally, you wouldn’t have to write a law for it, and the people would be held accountable by others. That’s a BIG wish, though, and I’m a realist–it’ll never happen. Instead, if it were written into law, it would have to be done the same ways that libel and slander laws are written, and there would have to be a criminal trial for it. I understand that up front that seems like a lot of extra work for the courts, but if the punishments were severe enough, then hopefully we would see an outright reduction on it.

        Some precedent for it would be libel laws as previously stated, false advertising laws, and public health laws like what Germany has instituted (NetzDG) that required social media to remove false health information within 24 hours.

        And just to make it clear, I don’t want to infringe on anyone’s right to free speech, but just like libel and slander laws, when that free speech damages others, then it has to be curbed. The scientific evidence is there for things like the mask mandate and the efficacy of vaccines, we just have to prove it in court and punish those who are guilty of spreading that false information.

        • Cosmicomical@lemmy.world
          41·
          6 months ago

          I’m all in favour of this, and I try to do keep people accountable for what they say, even though I often end up getting insults for it. But to judge in court someone for spreading lies you would need to know the objective truth, and setting truth into stone would compromise science’a ability to propose radical new ideas.

          I think there are ways to do this without compromising science, though. But they are all susceptible to the 50% attack, made famous by cryptocurrencies. If you rely on a community to certify what truth is, you are exposed to a potential attack where a powerful enemy buys more than 50% of the network to make them say their lie is true and the actual truth is a lie. I don’t have a solution for that yet.

          • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world
            1·
            6 months ago

            I’m not saying that the idea is perfect by any stretch, but we also can’t be beholden to what ifs. If we give up before we try because we might see failure down the line, then we might as well just start drinking bleach to cure our illnesses. Science can be proven. Mask mandates weren’t a hypothesis. Vaccine efficacy isn’t a hypothesis. If we get to where people in power are buying facts and we can no longer prove a truth in court, then we are beyond “mis-information” already.

  • GluWu@lemm.ee
    642·
    6 months ago

    I’m collecting vaccines like infinity stones. I’m going to unlock complete autism.

  • Mocking Moniker@lemmy.world
    452·
    6 months ago

    So, the universe is like a video game but the lesson is morality. Long story short, i have met the antivaxers and i understand. They are dishonest people. I dated their daughter. They will not listen because they’re arrogant. They will face horrors until they learn their lesson. The point is, this is a morality problem, not an education problem. Nothing will save them but their own misery you’re honestly trying to prevent.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
      4·
      6 months ago

      I’d say it is ,at least partly, an education problem.

      Sure, education is less likely to correct a deeply engraned false belief, but education is one of the most effective tools to prevent the lies, misinformation, and manipulation from taking hold in the first place.

      However, like most preventative measures, it will take a long time to see results.

      • Mocking Moniker@lemmy.world
        32·
        6 months ago

        OK, if you can educate them early, yeah. However, these folks were homeschooled. They were elitist and arrogant.

          • Mocking Moniker@lemmy.world
            21·
            5 months ago

            Yes, but i bet you don’t know how bad homeschooling is. It’s one of the few beliefs i share with the left that homeschooling is bad. It’s so bad that when people defend homeschooling, they get the objections wrong. Homeschooling fails so socialize children, and homeschooling advocates say that means children have no friends. Nobody says that. It’s so embarrassing. I dealt with homeschool kids and they’re fragile and weak.

            If i was on the left, i would cerebrate this like crazy. They are scared and they’re running away and what’s more their making their children weak.

    • Facebones@reddthat.com
      1·
      6 months ago

      My friends family is a bunch of trumpers, she’s apolitical and vaguely socially liberal.

      At her graduation party, they hung up a HUGE Trump banner. It wasn’t already up, they put it up before most people started showing up. Fucking insane.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    374·
    6 months ago

    Can we convince people that Andrew Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy and RFK, Jr. cause autism?

    (I don’t believe there’s anything actually wrong with being autistic, I have multiple autistic people in my family. I just think that would be amusing.)

    • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
      12·
      6 months ago

      Steps:

      1. be (usually born) rich
      2. have an agenda
      3. use your wealth to accomplish it
      4. lie, cheat, steal, do whatever you have to in order to “win”

      Did I leave anything out? :-P

    • someguy3@lemmy.caEnglish
      6·
      6 months ago

      Can we convince people that Andrew Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy and RFK, Jr. cause autism?

      Not autism. They cause death.

      • pivot_root@lemmy.world
        91·
        6 months ago

        For the idiots who avoid vaccinating their kids because “it causes autism,” death is preferable. Consider that they would rather take that risk than be put in a situation of having to parent a neuroatypical child.

        • WideEyedStupid@lemmy.world
          7·
          6 months ago

          This is what always got to me the most. Even if vaccines caused autism, wouldn’t that be preferable to your kid dying? Like, what the fuck is wrong with these people.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      6 months ago

      (I don’t believe there’s anything actually wrong with being autistic, I have multiple autistic people in my family. I just think that would be amusing.)

      there’s probably a less tenuous correlation there, though. just saying. Granted, correlation is not causation, but, eh… yeah.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        2·
        6 months ago

        I know, but imagine all of these people in this ludicrous panic suddenly thinking Wakefield is the culprit for autism…

  • InternetUser2012@midwest.social
    321·
    6 months ago

    I don’t care if these anti vax idiots kill themselves, I care that they are killing people with weakened immune systems or children that are either too young to get them or they didn’t vaccinate them. This is all 100% the fault tRump and Russian propaganda, it’s sad soo many fall for it.

    • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
      53·
      6 months ago

      survival of the fittest is doing its thing, even if innocent people go down as victims of stupid people, such is life and death.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        6·
        6 months ago

        That is a complete misunderstanding of how evolution works. This does not weed out the people who are not genetically immune from a disease. If civilization died and measles came back in force in two generations, it would be just as deadly as it was before vaccines were developed. Because this does nothing to genetically change humanity’s ability to fit into an ecological niche.

    • Rediphile@lemmy.ca
      26·
      6 months ago

      I’m ok with them harming some innocent people in the process of killing themselves. Greater good.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
      11·
      6 months ago

      While I hate what the internet is becoming because of AI, and I dread what’s going to come from the better systems down the road, and all the people who will be utterly lost as they fall in love with their phones, I am wondering if just maaaybe these LLM’s will be able to satisfy some people’s desperate craving for attention and acceptance with simulated social circles and virtual supportive communities and give people at least some kind of outlet or if nothing else keep them out of the way while the rest of us make progress.

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
    266·
    6 months ago

    We run into a few interesting possibilities here. Start with the assumption that more children are being diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. That gives us a few possibilities.

    1. Because there’s more and better screening autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is being caught more often. Okay, maybe. But.

    1.a) If more children are being appropriately diagnosed with ASD, then perhaps the criteria needs to be tightened up; at a certain point, behavior/feelings/thoughts are just normal.

    1. Because there’s more screening–but not necessarily better screening–children are being pathologized as having ASD when they do not, because too many clinicians don’t have the necessary expertise. This is a distinct possibility, in much the same way that kids are being labelled as having ADD/ADHD–and then getting drugs–when they’re more frequently just being kids.

    2. More children are actually on the autism spectrum now than there were 30 years ago. E.g., it’s not that more kids slipped through the cracks 30 years ago, but there is actually a higher rate of ASD than there was 30 years ago. This is the one that should cause the most concern; if this is actually the case, and can be demonstrated to be the case, then what factor is causing this maladaption?

    • thisisnotgoingwell@programming.dev
      8·
      6 months ago

      Agree on the better testing for ASD. According to the CDC, autism rates have doubled from the year 2000(1 in 68, vs 1 in 150).

      The consensus is that ASD is mostly genetic, however, there is some research going into other causes of autism, such environmental/biological causes. Personally, I think growing up with modern technology(kids being raised by YouTube/TikTok) impacts brain development/connections, so there are people with symptoms of ASD that otherwise would be “normal”

      The issue with diagnoses like this is that you arrive to the conclusion by looking at the symptoms. And there’s a lot of fucked up things going on right now that could cause more and more people to show symptoms.

      i’ve worked on building better habits such as exercise, maintaining social connections, and working through my emotions instead of repressing them, and I’ve noticed that many symptoms that I used to associate with ASD were really depression. Like some sort of coping, catatonic state. I’d imagine that with mental health being what it is, there’s probably a lot of people similar to me. Surprise, did you know ASD is far more common in males? 1 in 42, vs 1 in 189, for females.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
        3·
        6 months ago

        There’s some thought that autism rates are identical in men and women, and that the difference in diagnosis has more to do with the presentation. It’s plausible.

        • spikespaz@programming.dev
          3·
          6 months ago

          My ex wasn’t diagnosed with anything, but has an autistic sister and strange behaviors herself. Being suspicious of myself (I was diagnosed with ADHD during a time you couldn’t have both) and having always carefully observed people (to mask better), I noticed some qualities the two shared, but the symptoms were more subtle in my ex. She has been tested but not diagnosed, and I think the doctors were wrong. But, yes, symptoms observed had a distinctly feminine skew, or even a different mode of application. She did not get the help I know she needed (and she mistakenly held the opinion that the doctors are nigh-infallible, and that I am not ASD either).

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 months ago

        Yeah, I’ve suspected for a while that some of the autism spectrum is just the brain allocating resources differently to different things. It has a finite number of neurons (which is true even if it can grow new ones over time), so a higher emphasis on learning one thing could come at the cost of something else.

        Or it could even be a matter of some people not building as strong of a foundation in some areas because their brain didn’t figure out something that others did, and it snowballs from there as peers develop on that stronger foundation of things they think they just inherently know and can’t imagine someone not knowing it and those without that strong foundation try to develop along with their peers but can’t because of what they are missing.

        Like imagine that while learning math, you somehow miss learning the number 3. This would be pretty obvious because math is a rigid system, but imagine it wasn’t as strictly logical like language or social interactions. Maybe a better example would be developing drawing skills without knowing anything about perspective or lighting. Sure, there’s plenty of styles that don’t need that foundation, but if you want to draw photorealistic pictures, they are going to look off or even bad, even though they might still be recognizable. Kinda like socializing with someone with autism who isn’t good at masking.

        Though the ability to mask itself might indicate it’s deeper than that. It indicates that some are capable of adjusting for their foundation, does being able to mask while still having those gaps mean the gaps are genetic? Or can we only develop by building on what we have, so the best we can do is put patches over the shortcomings we recognize in ourselves and want to correct instead of being able to truly fill those gaps in the foundation?

        And all of this doesn’t even go into sensory issues related to autism. If there’s different mechanisms that result in the different aspects of autism, should they even be considered the same thing? How would one even figure out if they share mechanisms?

    • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world
      8·
      6 months ago

      1)a) you missed the part where you clearly said “spectrum” before.

      maybe instead, you/we need to change how we react to parts of the spectrum. That is a) it isn’t “normal” and b) that’s okay.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
        42·
        6 months ago

        Even though it’s a spectrum–in that it’s comprised of a number of different characteristics that are present to varying degrees–I think that perhaps some of those characteristics have been overly pathologized. I’m not sure exactly how to explain it. If I made up a disease–I’m going to call it Short-Man Syndrome (SMS)–and said that any male under 5’2" had SMS, then someone that was 5’2.1" wouldn’t fit the criteria. But wait!, he says, I feel short. So maybe that definition gets widened a little bit. So now a person that’s 5’2.5" says, well, I feel short too, and maybe a doctor disagrees, since 5’2.5" is pretty short, and that definition gets even wider. Eventually maybe someone that’s 5’11" is saying, well I feel short compared to Yao Ming…

        And maybe that’s what’s happening here. I don’t know. Even though all of these characteristics may exist on a continuum, you need to have a definite cut off point where you say, this point and beyond is pathological, and anything up to that, no matter how close, isn’t. Otherwise your definition becomes pointless.

    • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
      6·
      6 months ago

      If there ARE more cases of autism(which we dont know if there are, or if it’s a result of better screening. Smarter people than me would have to determine that) my first instinct would be to look at microplastics and other environmental pollutants. Again, more qualified people than me would have to look into that, but it seems to be a better hypothesis than the conspiracy theory about vaccines.

    • Sigilos@ttrpg.network
      5·
      6 months ago

      This is pure speculation, but since we found Lead caused so many development issues when it was so prominent in everyday life, and plastic has been likened to this generations lead- poisoning, I wonder if there is a link between the prevalence of micro plastics and the increase in ADHD and ASD.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      43·
      6 months ago

      kids are being labelled as having ADD/ADHD–and then getting drugs–when they’re more frequently just being kids.

      I might go a level deeper and argue that the formal education process requires a degree of attention and focus that lots of kids don’t have. The “autism” diagnosis and subsequent treatment is more about fitting round kids into square holes than it is treating an actual mental disorder.

      I can say from personal experience that Adderall helped me study even without ADD. Its a performance enhancing drug, of sorts. And if landing a diagnosis means giving your kids a chemical edge on the next state exam, then more parents are going to discover their children have a problem.

      I might take this one step deeper and assert that the real problem we’re attempting to medicate isn’t autism, its poverty. The underlying fear of an autistic diagnosis is that the child won’t grow up to be self-sufficient. The drugs (whether they’re necessary or simply a competitive edge) are intended to turn children into the successful mindless drones who are capable of churning mechanically through rote exercises that the school system / workforce demands of them.

      This is the one that should cause the most concern; if this is actually the case, and can be demonstrated to be the case, then what factor is causing this maladaption?

      Its possible that this is entirely due to a survivorship bias. Kids with autism are considered “salvageable” in an age where drowning the weakest of six children in the bath tube because they’re dead weight on the family income is no longer consider practical (fewer kids) or acceptable (surveillance state).

      Also possible that autism - like a number of other disorders - is linked to aging mothers or sunlight deficiency or toxic food/water/air in a heavily industrial society.

      Autism could arguably even be a kind-of beneficial mutation - the result of increasingly smart people having increasingly more mentally adapt babies with mental talents the rest of us dumb-dumbs only see as a handicap, because we’re trying to fit them into those aforementioned square holes.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
        1·
        6 months ago

        I might go a level deeper and argue that the formal education process requires a degree of attention and focus that lots of kids don’t have. The “autism” diagnosis and subsequent treatment is more about fitting round kids into square holes than it is treating an actual mental disorder.

        Okay, but that seems to be more prevalent now than it used to be. Is it really more prevalent? Or maybe the way we teach things has changed, leading to worse outcomes? Full disclosure: I was formally diagnosed with ASD in my later 30s; Asperger’s didn’t even exist as a diagnosis until after I had graduated from public schools. I had a very hard time focusing in all of my classes.

        Also possible that autism - like a number of other disorders - is linked to aging mothers

        I know that there’s a strong link between trisomy-23 (Downs Syndrome) and older mothers, but I hadn’t heard of other genetic issues. I’m not disputing it, just saying I wasn’t aware of them.

        more mentally adapt babies with mental talents the rest of us dumb-dumbs only see as a handicap,

        It is absolutely a handicap. This is undeniable. It’s a handicap because it hinders your ability to interact appropriately with the world. I have greatly reduced empathy and communication ability; I can usually guess how people are feeling, but I don’t really feel it in the way that most people say they do, and I don’t really feel much of my own emotions. I can’t just power through shit like some people can either; I’ll sometimes go into complete shutdown when there’s too much going on, things that most people have no issues with. There’s a lot more, really. But trust me, it’s a handicap in dealing with life.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
          11·
          6 months ago

          Okay, but that seems to be more prevalent now than it used to be. Is it really more prevalent? Or maybe the way we teach things has changed, leading to worse outcomes?

          Our education system has grown more rigid, more test-centric, and more exhausting under iterative attempts at reform. I’m not even speaking to “worse outcomes” so much as maladaptation. Kids with ADD are going to be more prone to exhibit symptoms in an environment that buckles them down and compels them to concentrate on singular tasks for longer amounts of time.

          I know that there’s a strong link between trisomy-23 (Downs Syndrome) and older mothers, but I hadn’t heard of other genetic issues.

          There’s a number of physical and psychological correlations but not a ton of causation. So its mostly a conjecture.

          I have greatly reduced empathy and communication ability; I can usually guess how people are feeling, but I don’t really feel it in the way that most people say they do, and I don’t really feel much of my own emotions. I can’t just power through shit like some people can either; I’ll sometimes go into complete shutdown when there’s too much going on, things that most people have no issues with.

          I’ve heard different takes on this from different people. And I’ve seen at least a few people horrified at the idea of any kind of change in their condition, for fear of it taking away something fundamental about them.

          So… idk. I definitely understand wanting relief from a handicap. But I’ve also heard people describe the tunnel vision and detachment as comparable to the deep immersion one gets in a state of flow.

    • feedmecontent@lemmy.world
      21·
      6 months ago

      Only if you’re smart anyway since autistic people have the whole distribution of capability represented. Then being smart isn’t enough. You also have to be resilient, lucky, and privileged (not enough systemic factors outside of systemic ableism to wash you out in a psychological and logistical pincer attack), and also lucky again to get past the many societal filters that block most autistic success and create the illusion of some unicorn like uniqueness in all visible versions of autistic success.

    • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
      151·
      6 months ago

      Sure, make sure to go back in time so that you aren’t overestimulated in your environment, don’t get bullied until you suffer an anxiety disorder, and have someone inspire interest in you for something capitalist society pays well for.

  • Reygle@lemmy.world
    17·
    6 months ago

    And the tech school I got a degree from now hosts courses on “Reiki healing” and “Crystal healing”. America is fucking doomed.

  • Hello_there@fedia.io
    161·
    6 months ago

    One of my high school acquaintances posted on Facebook that Peppa the Pig causes autism.
    I like that conspiracy theory much better, despite how illogical it is that watching a cartoon pig can cause a neurological disorder.