Oh goody goody, nothing like a little debate to go with my morning coffee.
This is what I think, as if anyone cares: there is more than one cause. There is more than one treatment.
The kids are born with a genetic predisposition, and then there is an external trigger.
Everyone so busy arguing, nobody doing anything.
If someone manufactures a product that the public won't buy, then the manufacturer either needs to change the product or they'll go out of business. Unless you're a pharma, then the solution is to keep your product the same, but try to make parents look like idiots and spend tons of money on PR, to the point of the government trying to
mandate that people buy your product. And they really do have a PR problem, because every time I've seen one of the govt/pharma/CDC types on tv, they act pretty arrogant. Arrogant is not the way to win friends. And the parents don't know who to believe- the arrogant CDC PR guy, or the mom with her son telling the story while her child sits rocking and flapping.
The whole thing now is a matter of trust. Who do you trust more. Some of us trust science, because it's science. Some of us trust other parents, because we think they are less biased. We used to trust the government, but it's not just the vaccine issue, and if you can't trust them for one thing why should you trust them for something else? This is the same government that gave us the bailout package, Monica Lewinsky, Watergate, Area 51...
All I can hope, and I do hope, is that future generations will look back on us now and say "How could they have not seen this? What were they thinking?" It's unfortunate that this generation is the one caught in the middle and that our children are the victims in a tug-of-war. It's not about them anymore, it's about ego, on both sides, it's about being right instead of finding the truth.