Evidence of Harm — Lessons
Posted by
Kevin
The introduction and the first chapter of Evidence of Harm have three lessons to teach us. The first is the least surprising: drug companies and the Republicans have attempted to remove even the possibility that they could be held liable for any wrong doing with regard to vaccinations and autism. They quietly slipped in a rider that essentially prevented them from facing any justice — even if such justice was warranted — into the Homeland Security bill. The Bush Administration then filed a motion to keep all government records on autism and vaccinations secret.
The second lesson is that Dan Burton is the worst kind of hypocrite. Burton fought the protection for drug companies, speaking out eloquently against cutting families off from the help and justice they have been entitled to. One of Burton’s grandchildren had a serious illness that Burton blamed on childhood vaccines, so he had a personal interest in the issue. And since it affected him personally, his long standing support for limiting lawsuits went right out the window. Other families and people in need are parasite dragging down the American economy. His family and families in situations like his are noble crusaders for the truth.
The third lesson is perhaps the most important and, I suspect, they key to understanding the vicious battles over the vaccination issue. The families in Evidence for Harm no longer trust the medical establishment — and they have good cause for that mistrust. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the medical establishment began to treat autism as something that could be treated. Even in the 1990s, the families in this book were lied to or kept in the dark about what was actually happening to their children. There concerns were brushed aside or minimized (”Take him fishing”, one doctor offered as treatment to a mother of an autistic child) , their children were treated like animals (one mother went to class early and found her child literally tied to a chair) and their children were placed in classes with uninformed and untrained teachers who, at best, ignored their children. And all the while they watched the treatment centers and special ed classes fill with other autism children at an almost exponential rate.
Those who do not believe that autism is related to vaccinations have a tendency to think that autism advocates who do believe in the connection are anti-vaccine and ant-medicine. There is a nugget of truth in that statement. But it does not come from the same place that belief in black helicopters comes from. Many advocates for autistic people are distrustful and demanding of the medical establishment because they feel that the medical establishment has lied to them, treated them with contempt, and been unconcerned with their children. After reading the opening chapters of Evidence of Harm, it is hard not see a grain of truth in that attitude.
