"The vaccines scare us because the diseases don't. And they don't because of the vaccines."

One of the most compelling paragraphs I've read in support of vaccinations (read the entire outstanding article at http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/correlation_causation_vaccinat.php).

Leaving children unvaccinated means going back to:

• Leg braces and iron lungs for people with polio (57,628 cases in 1952)
• Encephalitis and sterility for people with mumps (200,000 cases a year in the 1960s)
• Congenital rubella syndrome for children whose mothers contracted the illness during pregnancy.
• Blindness, pneumonia, encephalitis, and death--one per thousand--for people wth measles (nearly 1 million cases a year in the US before vaccines).
• Encephalitis and pulmonary hypertension for people with whooping cough--thanks to people who don't vaccinate their kids, in 2001, 17 people, mostly infants, died of pertussis (200,000 cases in 1940).
• Cardiac arrest and paralysis for people with diptheria (207,000 cases and about 15,000 deaths in 1920).

The vaccines scare us because the diseases don't. And they don't because of the vaccines.

In class we had a professor tell us that we will encounter parents not interested in vaccination. I know some personally, so this was no surprise, but believe it or not this was news to some of the medical students in my class.

"Some of them you can reason with," the professor explained, "but you will have some parents that simply won't change their minds. For them, you can argue 'till you're blue in the face, but they just won't change their opinion. From personal experience, I've found that it's just simply not worth the time to try to change their minds - they just won't budge."

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Talking with an autistic person... who can't speak

How can an autistic person be described as "brilliant" and having "a great sense of humour" if they can't even put together sounds that resemble words, let alone use language?!

"I find it very interesting that failure to learn your language is seen as a defecit, while failure to learn my language is seen as natural," says Amanda Baggs, a 26-year old woman with autism, with the aid of a computer keyboard and a voice modulator. "The thinking of people like me is only taken seriously if we learn your language."

Amanda has a language and way of seeing the world that is entirely her own. Watching the videos and reading Amanda's story on CNN's website has entirely fascinated me, blown me away, and forever changed the way I view people with autism. Click on the video link, "Watch Amanda communicate in her own way."

I value my abilities to communicate and think rationally so highly that I figure being in a situation like this would torment me. Similarly, I have an insecurity as well as a tendency to avoid people with autism based upon my ignorance and limited interactions with autistic persons. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way, but I'll admit that I do...albeit ashamedly.

I guess the biggest surprise for me was, "Wow, just because she can't speak our language, doesn't mean she can't understand it." The interviewer was asking her questions in perfectly normal English and she was processing and answering them as quickly as any 'normal' person would. Again, I haven't really ever been 'taught' or learned how to interact with autistic people, so this was a new thing for me; but I now know not to 'talk down to' a person with autism, or to speak to them as if they think 'slower' than I do.

Watching these videos and reading the article have helped me realize that my insecurity is entirely unfounded. Just because someone isn't capable of speaking to me, it doesn't mean there's something wrong with them or they're anything less than me.

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