We must do this before our health and education systems are bankrupted and before more of our nations' children are locked inside themselves with this disease.
Autism is a brain disorder that affects physical, social and language skills.
The syndrome usually appears in children before they reach age 3 and is characterized by an inability to socialize and a tendency to engage in constantly repeated actions or comments. It was first diagnosed in 1943 to describe children who appeared to be excessively withdrawn and preoccupied. One new theory on autism's mysterious cause from Dr. Andrew Wakefield, with the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine in London, is receiving a lot of media attention. In a study he published in the February 1998 issue of the British medical journal Lancet , Wakefield concluded that a common vaccine prescribed to infants by thousands of doctors around the world may be the source of the growing autism problem. The new theory has caught on rapidly among parents of autistic children.