Vaccines cause autism and… what, exactly?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this whole MMR / autism brouhaha lately, partly because it recently spilled over onto /.. It’s not hard to understand why some people might think MMR causes autism, since almost all cases of autism develop within a few months or years of the MMR shot. Isn’t the connection obvious?

It got me wondering about what other afflictions might be caused by those pesky vaccines. Then it suddenly struck me—I’m a victim myself!

When I was around ten or eleven, I had a diph-tet shot which hurt like hell and made my arm swell up for a couple of weeks. Not too long afterwards, maybe a matter of months, I started noticing other symptoms. I started getting hair where I hadn’t had any before, and some lumps I had always had between my legs but never given much attention started to grow; I started having intermittent pains in the larger joints and in my chest muscles; social interaction became awkward and strained; my speech became distorted. There is absolutely no doubt—this all started after my diph-tet shot.

I think I’ll call The Observer right away. The public has a right to know!

Thank you, fuwwy pawwot

 

[edit 2013-02-13: this post originally had a lolcat based on this photo with the text “Fuwwy Pawwot sez happy bday daddy”; the shirt I am wearing was a birthday present and references the lolrus. That image is long lost, but luckily, I still had the original photograph. My “fuwwy pawwot” died of kidney failure on August 16, 2008. I still miss her.]

On diagnosis

If you were in my movie
I’d have you as the doctor
Small black bag
And a big black coat

I’d have you make a house call
To the woman
You could lay your
Diagnostic hand
Upon her belly and her throat

When someone has lived with a disorder for more than half his life and finally gets a diagnosis and starts a course of treatment, you would expect him to feel relief, anticipation, hope perhaps of a better life. That’s certainly what he expected, after years of living with the wrong diagnosis, being treated for the wrong disorder, and suspecting it all along. But when the day finally came—

Anticipation, yes, but fearful anticipation. Hesitation, every morning; a long time spent staring at his medication before finally swallowing it. Panic attacks in the evening, followed by uneasy sleep.

Do you understand? He doesn’t, at first. His wife suggests that he has lived with the disorder for so long that it has become a part of his identity, and he is now afraid of living without it, of becoming a man he does not know. He thinks she may be right, but it does not stop the panic attacks.

All he can do is wait, and hope.

This Just In

The SCO Group, Inc. has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. This is interesting news, but not necessarily good news.

For one, it increases the likelihood that the lawsuits will be settled rather than tried, leaving a lot of questions unanswered. It would be far better for the Linux community (and the F/OSS community in general) to have these questions answered once and for all in court.

Then there is the matter of timing. SCO’s bankruptcy filing comes at a very opportune time: first, they were just handed a summary judgment (which, contrary to McBride’s claims, they haven’t yet appealed) saying that they don’t own the Unix copyrights and trademarks after all, which means they owe Novell a boatload of money (95% of their SCOSource revenues, if memory serves); second, the Novell case was just about to go to trial, and SCO failed to secure a jury trial, which was the only way they would have had a chance of winning. Filing for bankruptcy means that

  • Novell isn’t likely to see any of that money any time soon, if ever
  • The trial is suspended indefinitely, because under chapter 11 rules, a creditor isn’t allowed to sue a debtor.

Considering SCOs past behavior, I have to wonder—do you see it coming?—whether this is, in fact, just the latest in a long series of deliberate delaying moves…