WHEEEEHEEEEEE!!!

BUMPING THIS ONE TO THE TOP.
David Kirby delivered on his HuffPo promise. Please jump over for his take on the CDC report he told us about last nite in Providence.

Last day of school for Salamander...
But somehow it's Potatey who displays the 'I'm glad school is over and I can't WAIT to get out and get started on my summer' craziness. I swear, at some point overnite, Potatey morphed into the love child of the Tasmanian Devil and a Ninja Turtle.. he is BOUNCING OFF the walls hooting and hollering and 'attacking' anything and anybody in sight!!! (hmmm, wondering what he had for dinner last nite.. and yes, he kept the singing up for quite a while apparently.. HE, HE, HE).

David Kirby last nite was EXCELLENT.. he spent a lot of time on the (potential) mitochondrial dysfunction component of autism (a subject near and dear to my heart), and he dropped quite a little bombshell regarding a report from the CDC (signed by Ms. Gerberding) to the House Appropriations Committee (I think he said he was going to write a Huffington Post about it.. I DO hope so, as the whole story is so d#mn complicated, I'll need to hear it a few times before it registers). My take-away from the blurbs David shared from that CDC report is that [I'm paraphrasing] CDC 'concurs that the data captured by the VSD cannot be used to make any conclusive statements about a link between vaccines and autism'. YES, you are reading this right. CDC is concurring that the Verstraeten Study (which has been used over and over again to say 'There is no link. Shut up, you stupid parents. There is no link') tells us NOTHING (and of course I am referring to v 5 of that study as published, and not the v 0 of the study as revealed by the Simpsonwood documents..).

I hope to have more time later (plus I hope that David will do that Huffington Post as it'll save me a lot of time rooting through my recollections from last nite). Salamander is coming out of school at noon today, and I have a ton of work shit to get done...

Oh, did you catch the latest and 'greatest' way that AAP is trying to pressure parents who have questions regarding the current vaccination schedule to just 'shut up and comply'? Lovely eh?
And that those of us that decide to modify the recommended vaccination schedule (or decide to suspend all together as our child had a reaction that scared the crap out of us) are now being asked "Well, what disease do you want your child to get?"

WTF?

I'll be honest, I'll take the flu, chicken pox, rubella, mumps and even measles any day, yes ANY day, over the (seemingly never ending) cascade of medical problems I've seen Salamander struggle with over the past 8.5 or so years (not saying vaccines caused these, but they didn't help.. )

[yes, I realize I didn't mention polio, tetanus, pertussis, diphtheria, and a handful of others - the, albeit low, potential for my boys getting those diseases DOES scare me. But not as much as the, much higher, potential for my boys to develop serious adverse events as a result of those vaccines]