This anti-vaccination hysteria is gonna cause outbreaks of diseases in my children’s lifetimes that were all but eradicated in my lifetime.

For pete’s sake: There’s “more autism” now because screening, detection, etc., have become better, maybe even a little “too sensitive”. In my day, the autistic kids were sorta thought of as being kinda weird, but that was about the extent of it.

Me, I’ve got a whole passle of nephews who’ve got the condition; I had a great-uncle who was “kind of quiet and a little funny”, and guess what? I remind all my living relatives who knew the man of him; it’s a condition with a genetic pre-disposition, not caused by vaccinations.

With care and love, and a lot of luck, most cases of “autism spectrum disorders” - as vague and useless a term as any, and really, while maybe useful for classification, brings logical order to the whole thing, it automatically lumps in people, like me, touched slightly with it, in the classical Aspberger’s Syndrome way, with others, like my one poor nephew, who is incapable of communication beyond screams, and who must be watched for his safety and the safety of those around him - in any event, with care, love, and luck, these children are able to grow up to live happy and productive lives.