I was born with autism, but I make sure to get all my shots to make sure I'm always running the latest version.

As someone with autism I vaccinate regularly to increase my power.

Shout out to when HBomb says "I want Brian Deer to be able to track this video coming out on a graph of his book sales" and then in his plagerism video it turns out there was a rather impressive uptick in the book sales after this video came out. Sometimes dreams do come true.

"Save the children" MY BROTHER IN CHRIST, would you rather have a kid who likes trains or a kid that died because of measles

When we got our COVID shots, in school, the three of us, we were sitting there for the required fifteen minutes. We sat there in silence. Suddenly one of us, not me, my friend, turns to me with this shit eating grin on his face. The two of us turn to him. We stare at each other. Still grinning, he says "I can feel my autism getting stronger" and the three of us lose our minds laughing. We are all diagnosed. Life is, if not good, at least okay

To be fair, the risk of Alzheimer's does go up significantly if you are still alive

I grew up very Christian and was told that my autism was caused by my parent's sins. For whatever reason, I deserve to be punished for things my parents did. And being told by everyone around me that I am a punishment for my parents was definitely very good for my mental health.

something about a respected scientist calling him "a wanker and a fraud" just tickles me right

The fact that people forgot how bad measles is and decided that autism was somehow the scarier option really speaks to how effective the measles vaccine has been

Watching this video 2+ years later and the best joke in the piece being the final line: "I will never put this much effort into researching a video ever again..."

You know, parents could probably notice signs of autism in their infant children if they observed their children without taking everything their children do personally. For example, I have a child on the spectrum, and I can remember incidents of accidentally over stimulating him VERY early on. My husband and I put my son on a blanket one day, and one of us on each side gently waved the blanket up and down. My son LOVED it! He giggled like mad; just having the time of his life. Then suddenly, without warning, he started crying and screaming even louder than he had previously been giggling. He wasn’t just suddenly stresses out, he was in pain, and there was absolutely nothing I would normally do to comfort him that worked in that moment. He was simply inconsolable for ten minutes. It took a long time for me to figure out strategies to comfort him when he gets overstimulated. It takes a lot of calm and collected observation to figure it out, and some parents simply don’t have the patience for that, I guess. He was so young he couldn’t even walk yet. This did not happen in a timeframe that lined up with his vaccine schedule. It was just him. It was just my sweet little boy struggling to cope with new experiences that he didn’t understand. That’s it. My brother is also on the spectrum, and my mother remembers signs all the way back to when he was newborn. He HATED nursing. Obviously he did because he was hungry, but according to my mom the moment he unlatched he would use every ounce of strength in his little body to try to get out of her arms. Thankfully my mom is a deeply kind and empathetic person, who DOESN’T look to her children to be the source of her self esteem, so she simply took note and tried to accommodate him however she could. Parents who take everything personally, and treat their children as if they were born for the soul purpose of making said parents feel good about themselves; they are the ones you often see in the VaCcInEs MaDe My BaBy AuTiStIc band wagons. You can hear it in the way they talk that when they recall things like what I just described, they are personally offended that their children behave differently. They’re angry. They are genuinely pissed off about it. It’s mystifying. But that irrational reaction explains why they are so desperate to find someone or something to blame.

A friend of mine - born in eastern Europe in the 90s - did not receive a polio vaccine and they did get infected as a toddler. They now use leg braces and sometimes a wheelchair for mobility. They always say, "Everyone thinks it's gone, but I'm one of the unlucky few." It's a very real reminder, for me, that vaccines have an impressive success rate in improving the lives of people everywhere.

The part about child abuse is actually sickening. Wakefield shouldn't have just lost his medical license. He should be in jail for assault and child abuse.

wakefield paper is so easy to debunk it was an exercise in my first year of university

My grandma and I used to be very close, she also used to be an anti-vaxer. For as long I could remember shes been into some spiritual woo-woo stuff, and all the 'alternative medicine' things that comes with it. Some of it even helped me (it might have been a placebo effect, but I was an anxious kid, who had a lot of trouble falling asleep and whatever sleep tonic bs it was she gave me helped) and I'm thankful for that. But around the time my younger cousins were born, she got cought up in the whole anti-vax thing. When my 1st cousin was born she initially refused to get the jab (i cant remember what exactly it was for) and so my aunt and uncle said "okay, then you can't see your grandson". That got her ass in gear and she got all the nessecary vaccines. This by no means made her re-think her opinions on vaccines but she knew the family didn't appreciate her views on that, so she would bring it up, atleast not often. I remember meeting one of my grandmas friends once, she was nice, she had two kids, one girl and one boy. This boy had been diagnosed with autism, his parents couldn't afford to give him the help and accomodations he needed. This resulted in almost daily meltdowns, he also had a few other diagnoses for things like excma and a severe gluten intolerance that contributed to the severity of these meltdowns and his sensory issues. Looking back now, althought her autism presented as less 'severe' or she may have been 'higher functioning', I think the girl may have been autistic too, however she had no official diagnosis, which might be becuase many AFAB people with autism and/or adhd can present differently than has been traditionally studed and recorded in AMAB people, but we know that there is a genetic link in many neurodiverse conditions. The previous paragraph isnt just me rambling I think its important backstory/context. Fast forward to late 2021, we live in Australia, Victoria. Back in 2020 and 2021 my state was pretty well known for our many numerous and 'harsh' lockdowns, we'd recently just gotten out of lockdown so me, my mums and my Grandma decided to get lunch together to catch up. Everything was going well, we were wrapping up and the conversation got political. Normaly this would be fine, most of our political views tend to line up and what doesn't usually isn't that big of a deal. But then as we're standing in the car park (it was a pretty rural place with very little traffic so we were perfectly safe) preparing to say our goodbyes, my Nana brings up vaccines. She starts talking about how they cause autism, how she's heard friends and friends of friends talk about how autism ripped their childeren away from them, about how these childeren who had apparently been very outgoing and talkative had suddenly, after recieveing their vaccines, become non verbal, aggressive and withdrawn. About how, autism, quote, "turned their childeren into monsters". I'd seen this youtube video for the first time not long before, so I tired to reason and argue with her using a lot of the evidence and counter-arguements presented here, and I tried be calm, tried to be understanding and patient. But she kept refusing to budge, kept talking about all these 2nd, 3rd or who knows how many hand accounts of anti-vax parents with autistic kids. And the way she talked about these kids. Fuck. Here is this woman, who I've known my whole life to be nothing but kind and compassionate to everyone in her life, who was one of the first people to notice how my ex-step mum treated and talked to me and realise it was abuse. Here she is, talking about these children like they were less than a rabid dog. I knew she wasn't perfect, I knew she had her problems, I knew she was raised during a 'different time'. But to hear my grandma talk about these innocent childeren like that broke my heart. A few months before this argument I was officially diagnosed with ADHD. And by no means am I saying that I have any real understanding of what its like to have autisim. There is a large overlap of symptoms and traits and how they can present between ADHD and Autism, so much so that it is commom for people with autism to be misdiagnosed as having ADHD or for people to even have both. And so, to hear my Nana talk about these kids that I have so much in common with in such a dehumanizing way? it felt like she was talking about me. I know now, that after a certain threshold the anti-vax movement isnt about skeptisism in the government and the medical industry. It's about fear. Not for their childeren as they may lead you to believe, but of them. of this diagnosis that they dont understand, of how their child is different. In the generations before vaccines they'd have called their childeren changelings, Things that were not their childeren, that had taken their place. By the end of the argument I was crying in frustration despreatly trying to make my nan understand that these childerens autism doesnt make them any less deserving of love, it doesn't mean that we shoud be banning vaccines, it just means that we need to adapt and be more prepared to make the nessecary accomodations for these kids. But no matter what I'd say she just couldn't get it. I walked off and got into my mums car. This whole time my mums had been trying to de-escalate the situation and i think they were just in shock by the end of it. They said their goodbyes. see you soon, love yous, etc. I got out of the car for a little bit to give my nana a hug and say goodbye but that was it. I spent almost the whole car ride home crying. Fast forward again to the begining of this year, I'm spending time with my nana and she brings up autism, i'm imediatly prepared to go on the defensive but as she keeps talking i realise, her opinions have changed. she's reassesed her views and done more research, she's talking about poeple with autism like theyre PEOPLE. She's even talking about how she can see it in some of our family members about how SHE might be autistic. I wanted to write this so that anyone else seeing this who has or had relatives or loved ones that were/are antivax that there is hope, it can get better. And I really hope it does for you. I also wanted to write this to show how much this youtube video means to me. That a whole new generation of people are learning about anti-vaxxers and how to deal with them. This video is honestly an educational resource, I think that this video and others like it are important and for them to be here, for free, easy for anyone to access is so insanely important that i dont even have to words left to finish this monolith of a comment in a satisfying way. All I can think of thats left to say is, Thank you hbomberguy for making this video.

I like how the ENTIRE movement is held up by a Popsicle stick of not researching what they believe

Wow that Brian Deer documentary sure sounds great, I just wish there was a worse summarized version of it with more factual errors

“This is not how a healthy society discusses its people” - this is such a profound yet simple observation. well done mate

“The only problem, is that it was not approved by the ethics board, but that doesn’t make it unethical!” Umm, YES! *YES IT DOES! THAT’S THE ENTIRE POINT OF AN ETHICS BOARD!*

As an autistic person it's incredibly frustrating and depressing seeing your existence get thrown around as a debate point in issues like this. So, I massively appreciate the time and effort you took to use the correct language and generally speak about autism & autistic people very respectfully, and just, you know, treat us like people.

"Bowel Disease from MMR turning the children Autistic" is the prequel to "Chemicals in the water turning the frogs gay" I never wanted.

I love how Wakefield’s new boss was like “You know, Andy, you’re right! This does warrant more looking into! Let’s fund a giant study to check your work!” That’s a real power move

I started having seizures after getting the first COVID vaccine. I'd later be diagnosed with general seizure disorder. I'm so grateful that I understand that some things happen at the same time as other things. And even if the two things were related, I'd still tell you GET YOUR COVID VACCINE OMG SERIOUSLY

The colonoscopy thing is fucking insane. My dad had bowel cancer back in 2014 (he's all good, they caught it early and were able to operate) and so every two years he has to have a colonoscopy to make sure it doesn't come back, and he, a 50 year old man who has already dealt with something as painful as cancer, finds the procedure excruciating. As an autistic minor myself, inflicting that shit on young autistic kids whose parents don't even understand what is going on is completely unforgivable and Wakefield should be in prison

what im getting out of the antivax movement is that some parents would rather risk having a dead child than an autistic one :/

My scientific research shows an overwhelming amount of cases where children with autism have contacted sunlight during their childhood. Therefore, sunlight causes autism. Thank you for coming to my show.

The point about parents not noticing their child's autism symptoms until after a vaccination reminds me of something I learned while learning ASL. Majority of all deaf people are born from hearing families, and a lot of them were not even known to be deaf for potentially years. Newborns can pass initial testing by accident or by the chance their deafness develops soon after, and parents just notice that their child isn't saying their first words, or is behind on certain social and cognitive developments. Babies are remarkably good at imitating hearing behaviors through their other senses, such as turning to you when you enter a room simply by smelling you or feeling the floor move, or knowing that someone is at the door by seeing the dog bark. People suspect that their child has some kind of developmental disorder until a routine hearing test reveals that they are totally deaf. This delay in accomodation for their deafness and being denied access to language is what causes cognitive and social disabilities in deaf people. Deaf people who come from deaf families who have access to decent education don't have these issues. I'm kinda surprised no one has claimed that vaccines cause deafness............ wait maybe they have...

I remember during Wakefield's testing on the children, the nurse's voices were basically discarded, simply because at the time, people for some reason held higher regards to doctors than nurses. In my country, nurses were considered doctor's "errand runners" and nothing more. As a nurse myself, I feel bad for the ones who were forced into doing these tests. Because if anything goes wrong, the whole team will be reprimanded. You can't just pin the fault onto 1 person (Wakefield in this case) because at the end of the day, it was you that was in that surgery, and you could have walked away. Peer pressure in the lab is legit.

I learned that correlation ≠ causation in high school. It alarms me that grown adults haven’t learned that yet

My dad, who is a licensed physician and (in my opinion) a very intelligent man, once described Andrew Wakefield as an "evil fucker".

"No, Rachel don't wave the camera that's not how people communicate!" Is one of the best sentences I've ever heard.

As someone who was growing up during this time, I still suffer from this mindset even though I know it's not true! My mum all my life has been a huge anti-vaccine person, and it has basically led to me being terrified of vaccines even though I quickly realised as a teenager that the study was nothing but a load of shit. I got my first vaccine in 2022, for covid, and it was genuinely terrifying at the time - but I knew it was something I had to do to protect myself and others from transmission. Its one of those things that even though you know its not true, you can't just undo the multiple decades of trauma fear your parents and the wider society dumped onto you. It not only causes misinformation during the time it was published, but actively carries on over the generations because of fear mongering in your own home. Even though I am a sociology undergraduate, and I'm actively aware of research ethics and what makes a shit study and what doesn't - I am still unable to fully convince myself that getting more vaccines isn't going to kill me or give me a disease. I genuinely would never wish on anyone what my childhood was like. I was beaten into fear for every aspect of my life, and as a young adult it's likely going to take me the rest of my life to undo this. And on the other hand, people like my siblings (who are adults and have children of their own!!) Believe this stuff because it was ingrained in them aswell, from my mum to the media it was fucking everywhere. And so much so that my own nieces and nephews have missed out on important vaccines because my siblings genuinely believe they may be endangering their children. Thanks Wakefield, you genuinely managed to ruin the lives of so many people. Ps. Thanks Harry! going to send this to my family and see how far they get into the video before calling me a socialist cuck . Wish me luck!

Incredible how the first American, Tommy Tallarico, created such a fantastic documentary on the MMR scare. Thanks, Tommy.

Brian David Gilbert’s narration with varying levels of bad British accents is my favorite thing ever

I mean, it makes sense its caused by bowel disease, im autistic and my mom always told me i was a pain in the ass

Its insane that as a middle schooler they had us disprove his original paper? Like how did the media instantly report the autism scare but not be like "Anyone who isnt fucking stupid can see this is bullshit"

"if youre lying, then your book is also lying" is so underrated. good on that reporter.

“Autistic people are constantly accommodating to a world that refuses to accommodate to them” truer words have never been said

I'm autistic, and I rewatch this video every so often to bask in Hbomb's righteous anger at the anti-vax movement. Thank you for your compassion towards people like me.

God, the study being evidence and then getting given to Brian Deer is such an Ace Attorney moment. Love that shit

1) This isn't a video. That's fucking movie. 2) Brian Deer deserves a medal for exposing this.

There is sufficient anxiety, in my own mind, that Tommy Tallarico's mother is proud of him.

I feel like more of the child abuse needs to be talked about because I've listened to/watched a bunch of stuff about this guy and I had never heard before that the children were given lumbar punctures. One of the most painful medical procedures that you can have done.

I came back to this video after watching Plagiarism and You(Tube) and observed a really striking commonality in how both Andrew Wakefield and James Somerton defend themselves: they use other people as shields. The implications in how Wakefield says, “WE believe- we trust in the parents’ story” is so similar to how Somerton said “If someone is accusing me of plagiarism, they’d be accusing NICK of plagiarism, and I won’t tolerate that.” Both of these men knew they were lying to people who trusted them, and would hide behind the people they’d worked with to try to make themselves look better. “If you’re accusing ME of lying, you’re REALLY accusing this other person of lying, and they’d NEVER lie!” It’s so scummy.

Anti-vaxxers: "Do your own research!" The research:

"This isn't skepticism. This is ignorance trying to _sound_ like skepticism." Such a good quote Hbomb. I'm not even joking, more people need to be aware of that.

Just got to the part where you say "Get a colonoscopy, I'm serious, cancer kills". Thank you for including that even though the procedure sounded unpleasant. I've lost a family member to intestinal cancer at a "young" age (50) as well, and it hurts so much to know it could have been discovered so much earlier. So thank you for including that. Also, ofc the video is incredibly well done, presented, and researched. I'll recommend this to everyone.

Thank you for talking about what those children went through. My child is non-speaking and even routine doctor or dental visits are terrifying for him and require multiple people to get necessary procedures done. He doesn't always understand why a medical procedure needs to be done, and all I can do is hold him through it and comfort him the best I can. I can't imagine how traumatizing it was for those poor babies to go through that, and all just to line the pockets of a literal monster. This was the first time I ever heard the children in the study discussed in a real and compassionate way. I appreciate that so much.

it’s so frustrating as an autistic person that people believe that getting a potential deadly disease is better than having autism. having autism can be hard at times, but i’m still a person and i’m not “broken” or “ruined”. autism has largely been villainized, and multiple autism organizations *cough cough autism speaks* have made it way worse.

I know this has been said in the video and probably a lot in the comments, but as an autistic person I cannot express enough how absolutely devastating it feels to see real people say that they would rather their child die of a preventable disease than turn out like you.

As an autistic person: we have always been around. We didn't just start appearing because of vaccines. In fact, I've heard a theory that Changelings- or, fae children that replace human children- were actually just autistic kids. The reason there seems to be a rise in autism is due to a few things: 1) we're better at recognizing and diagnosing it, and 2) the world is growing less and less accommodating for autistic people. It's so loud and fast and bright, it's no wonder autism is more noticeable now. The world isn't built for people like us. When the world is built against you, it's easier to see how you're different than the way society expects you to function.

The fact that this video only has 9.3 million views is a disgrace. Every single person around the world should be forced to watch this, especially anti-vaxxers, and Andrew Wakefield himself. Wakefield should also be in prison. So should Barr. The fact that these men walk free is a gross oversight of justice

"people don't read scientific papers" me, with the type of autism where i enjoy reading scientific papers: 😎

“This is not how a healthy society discusses its people” is the the single best sentence I’ve heard

i wish i knew what was so wrong with autism that parents would rather kill their child than have a child with autism. "oh no," an anti-vaxxer parent says "i have to be a parent and actually care about my child. if they get autism, i will have to be more attentive... can't have that can we."

I was so glad when I found out about Brian deer. Apparently, my parents were sitting on the fence about of they would get their kid's vaccinated if they ever had one, then whilst my mum was pregnant with me, that documentary came out and she chose to get the vaccine when I was old enough. I understand her fear, she was a first time parent with all these news sources screaming at her that if she got me vaccinated, I'd get autism and bowel issues. So I don't blame her, but I'm so greatful that she did see that documentary and choose to get me, and later on my younger brother, vaccinated. Because I remember growing up and seeing and hearing new reports of measles outbreaks in cities around the UK. Heck, I'm pretty sure there's one in Birmingham right now, last I heard 3 children were hospitalised, but that was a few days ago and it's likely gotten worse. But each time, I am so glad my mum chose to get me an MMR vaccine. Especially since I know people who genuinely cannot get the vaccine because their immune system hates them and as a result, they have to rely on herd immunity and hoping that other people maintain hygiene. Opting against vaccination when you are able to get one is just selfish.

My parents didn't give me the MMR as a child because of the Wakefield effect. I'm still Autistic and I nearly died of Mumps last year

My aunt is a vaccine "skeptic" and constantly brings the Wakefield paper up, I personally like to remind her that no one has EVER shit themselves autistic

Hold on hold on hold on. Late to the party, but using my tingling doctor senses, I genuinely think I've come up with a potentially new hypothesis based on pure speculation to make all of this even worse. "Dialysable lymphocyte extract" sounds a lot like someone dialysing their blood and trying to get "lymphocyte extract" out of it. The result of something being "dialysed" is... dialysate. Basically a salty liquid full of human waste products. The exact nature of this fluid depends on whether it is hemodialysis (HD) or peritoneal dialysis (PD), the latter being way more nasty seeing as it's just saline that sits around in the space around your gut for a while. Seing as lymphocytes do not cross the membranes used in hemodialysis, if you want to "extract" anything from lymphocytes it needs to be peritoneal dialysis fluid. So...going with the caliber of human being we're working with here, let me put forth a hypothesis that I have no proof of whatsoever, but fits with the characters at play. Some background facts: - There is no way to get dialysis unless you need it. You need surgery to get the required caliber of IV access to handle the volume of blood or access to the peritoneum, and be followed up. - Hemodialysis is done in specialised centers, and the dialysate is usually disposed of as biological waste (not 100% sure on exact disposal routines, might vary by center). - Peritoneal dialysis however, is done from the comfort of your own home, and you dispose of the fluid as you will. - No sane person will ever undergo dialysis just for fun, over a long enough period time it often leads to potentially lethal complications. - Peritoneal dialysis fluid is tested for lymphocytes (actually all leukocytes usually) now and then in order to diagnose infections, and always contains a little, making every PD patient very cognisent of the fact that there are lymphocytes in PD fluid. In fact it's pretty much the only thing you ever test PD fluid for, so if there's one thing you know for sure is in there, it's that. - Lymphocytes come from the bone marrow. Every doctor, no matter how disgraced, knows this. Now, here is where the wild speculation comes in: Ex-Dr. Fudenberg was caught stealing drugs, in other words, he was most likely an opiate addict (this is by far the most abundant addictive drug in medical cabinets). Opiate addicts have a tendency to destroy their kidneys, and so addicts are not uncommon dialysis patients. Or he might have been a dialysis patient for a bunch of other reasons. I see in the interview that he's wearing huge sunglasses, which might be because he's blind. This would fit with a poorly controlled diabetes for instance, which destroys your eyes and kidneys. This part is very very speculative, so take this particular paragraph with extra salt. Now, put yourself in the mind of disgraced Ex-Dr. Fudenberg, the opiate addict and dialysis patient. You're doing your peritoneal dialysis at home, you're poor because you got no job, no MD, and you have an opiate addiction. You're also generally just a huge piece of shit. You look at the bag of peritoneal dialysate, dirty saline water that is getting pumped out of your gut after sitting there overnight, and you ask yourself...can I sell this shit? So you boil down the dialysate, which will leave mostly some whitish powder which is mostly the salt from the saline, mixed with human waste products and remains of cells (including lymphocytes). You pack it up in a pill, and call it "Dialysable lymphocyte extract", and you try to market it through a quack paper as a cure against autism. When interviewed about this by a reporter years later you keep trying to market this "product", saying that the cure is in your bone marrow because yes, technically peritoneal dialysate contains lymphocytes that indeed do in fact come from your bone marrow. So... if this line of complete speculation is true, Andrew Wakefield might have fed a child an old mans boiled down dialysis fluid. One pill at a time, every other day, for three to six months. TLDR: "Dialysable lymphocyte extract" might quite possibly be human waste.

My girlfriend is in the low 20s and has autism. autists are just people who need some extra help. Extra clarification in communication, extra consideration. it really is crazy how it's viewed by a lot of the general public, her father included.

"This isn't skepticism. This is ignorance masquerading as skepticism." Mic drop moment.

I can't believe vaccines gave me an ouchy tum tum and a hyperfixation for Super Mario

my dad split my MMR vaccine into three because of this. jokes on him , still autistic 😎

I'm neurodivergent and the vaccine-autism shit is honestly so exhausting. the sheer malice and hate for us is just. i don't even have words for that.

I mean technically speaking the chance of Alzheimer's does increase with the amount of vaccines you get because you'll probably live long enough to develop Alzheimer's

My dad had measles as a kid, it caused encephalitis and he went deaf. I have autism and I much prefer that to, you know...brain damage.

Thank you for this video. I’m from the UK and have had a double lung and liver transplant which means I’m in the “extremely vulnerable” category regarding covid due to the medication I have to take. Looking at me you wouldn’t know I’m any different from anyone else who isn’t vulnerable. The whole refusal to be vaccinated made me worried to go anywhere long after the lockdown ended and not only that, but hearing so many people just dismiss the possible deaths of vunerable people as “survival of the fittest” and that “they are weak anyway or are going to die anyway” was extremely depressing and really made me lose faith in people. Even among people I know who know I’m included in that category a lot of them held this belief which was shocking. The thought that I had survived such bad odds and the surgery only to die because of other peoples ignorance and cold-heartedness made me really angry and sad at the same time. I wish more people understood the things you covered in this video, but some people are too happy in their ignorance and love feeling like they’re going against some system that’s out to destroy them even tho it’s clearly not. Thank you.

This is the start of the trend of HBomberguy trying to make an interesting 15 minute long video about something and then realizing that the rabbit hole is fucking MASSIVE

Wakefield was saying that the cause of the autism was a “leaky gut”, meanwhile he was actually puncturing children’s intestines with unsafe colonoscopies. I know it doesn’t matter now, but that sounds related somehow

It's kind of crazy how one greedy husk of a man can do so much damage.

I recently got a Covid booster and a flu shot. Now I’m autistic. I was autistic before too.

Damn this is technically the first of the "documentary about a normal topic turns into this guy fucking sucks" trilogy

... Fuck, why the hell is Wakefield not given a life sentence for just the things he did to the kids?

Something interesting to me as an autistic person is the fact that anti-vax parents who are terrified of autism rarely seem to even know what autism is. They talk about it like it's a shadow monster lurking in the darkness and waiting to snatch up their kids in the night. For half of them it doesn't even occur to them that autistic adults exist and have lives of their own. Honestly most of them talk about autism solely as a burden on them and not something that their children will have to deal with their entire lives. Their definition of autism boils down to "a bad thing that will happen to me" and not "a condition my child might have". That's weird, isn't it?

You guys aren't going to believe this. But now Andrew Wakefield is now writing and directing Antivax drama films, with his first film called "Protocol 7" having its trailer drop just last week. And the whole premise is so absurd it reeks of desperation.

"that said i'm never putting this much effort in to a video again" and then he puts that much effort and more in to a video again

"Please stop telling me to make my videos shorter" No. Longer. If I haven't died of old age by the time I finish a video on LGBT representation in straight-to-video Transformers movies or whatever, I won't be happy. Better shell out for fiber-optics, bomberman!

i'm autistic and i've never laughed harder than as a teen when my parents got a letter from the NHS informing them that i hadn't actually gotten my MMR vaccines as a baby. "oh damn, guess i've gotta get un-diagnosed with the autism then"

are we considering the fact that vaccines hurt and your baby is probably mad because Arm Hurty

There is sufficient anxiety in my mind that my mother is very proud

As a Dark Personal Anecdote: My mother asked me as a kid if I "wanted" a specific vaccine, and I obviously said no because I was a child, therefore I did not receive it and forgot about the incident for years. (She asked me because she was mildly anti-vax, too late for that ma'am, I was born autistic, and wanted to have someone to put the blame on in case it caused problems down the line... It wasn't until this year, when I was diagnosed with an infection that was a result of assault, that I discovered I had contracted the exact infection said vaccine would have prevented. It is likely that I will develop at least one kind of cancer as a result, and still have not recovered from my own mother telling me it was my fault because I "chose" to refuse the vaccine as a kid. Please, for fuck sake, vaccinate your children and yourself if it is approved by your primary care physician to do so. It is not worth the risk of possibly losing your or your child's life, or ending up forever marred by a disease/infection that you could've been safe from like myself. I T I S N O T W O R T H I T

I am autistic and i actually find the find the part where parents would rather their kids die of preventable diseases than be even a little like me EVER SO SLIGHTLY INSULTING

I've always been skeptical about vaccines and watching this put my mind at ease. Thank you

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="103">1:43</a>:27 "That said, I'm never putting this much effort into a video again." Me, after watching the two-hour video about the Roblox "OOF" sound effect: And I cannot thank you enough for having completely disregarded that.

"A bowel disease that turns children autistic" I swear, this sounds like he threw darts at a board to make up a new disease.

Wow. You didnt lie. It did in fact, get a whole lot worse.

As someone with an autistic sibling, knowing that so many people would rather have those closest do them die slow, preventable deaths over giving an little bit extra accommodation and love to those who are like her is very disheartening and near the top of my list of what I dislike about humanity. My sister isn't broken, she isn't a victim. She's one of the most beautiful souls I know and lives a much happier life than I do honestly. I never have viewed her as being sick or even "different", she's just another person with certain needs my whole family is more than used to. My parents are far from perfect when it comes to separating crackpot conservative views from objective reality (let's just say the COVID era has been interesting...) but they never started on that "vaccines start autism" shit even once. Me and my sister got fully jabbed and they love us both so much, they're setting my sister up great with resources and support that maintains her agency and again, they don't mind giving the extra effort and attention at those moments when it's needed. No one's reading this but HB, thank you for what you do and have continued to do since posting this video. To paraphrase yourself at the end of this video (and hopefully avoid plagiarism!), you have taken the depression energy that millions of us have at the current state of the world and have used it for an undeniable positive impact on the lives of many. I hope to find my own way to make a similar change, during 2022-2023 I really began to close myself off and retreat inward... but your work is giving me the strength to try and live boldly again.

speaking to the frustration of being mildly autistic as a kid, I have to say, the most frustrating part of it all is people treating me like I'm obviously an idiot. Autism doesn't make me stupid, it makes me socially awkward. The inability to adhere to societal norms in this world is pretty much just activating the inner bigot of human beings cause they subconsciously can't stand you. I still remember one person in Marching Band when I was in high school who acted like shit to me. Me, and a few of the other band members were all baffled as to "Why" and as it turned out, it was because " my voice sounded immature" ... yeah... she treated me like the scum of the earth cause she didn't like my voice. What do you even call that? Voicist?! I'd hate to imagine how I'd be treated if I were both black AND autistic.

"do you believe autism can be cured?" "yes" ah damn. he got us yall. we've just been staying autistic for like no reason

The whole "bribing children for their blood" thing is so creepy, stupid, absurd and horribly wrong in every way that it could be an Invader Zim episode.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="79">1:19</a>:38 "Well, if you're lying, then your book is also a lie" lmao fuckin GET him, Cooper

why do these people think autism is so evil like wtf

everyone keeps talking about how to "cure" autism or "prevent" autism, but the only time I hear about helping people with autism live our lives it's from people who think we never age beyond 7

What's fun is when I first started university, I distinctly remember my professor gave us all a handout saying it was a published scientific paper, and our homework was to read it and jot down what things looked good, what things looked bad, and to write a short analysis of the work and what we thought of it. It was Wakefield's paper. The next day our professor pulled it up on her computer with the giant red REDACTED all over it and explained what happened with the paper, and the entire class was about our analysis, understanding good science from bad, and learning how to be more scientifically literate by not just taking what a paper says for granted. I'll always remember that class, it felt empowering and really helped to form who I am as a scientist today. So I guess that's one good thing Wakefield contributed to the world. But really, I'd rather this just not have ever happened and we learned the same values some other way. I dunno, I thought you might be interested in knowing that.

autistic here i never saw much of the scare, and seeing this video surprised me by how much that society was repulsed by autism what about us scares people so much that people are more willing to risk lives than let those lives be autistic?

The number one rule of investigative journalism is that the harder someone tries to prevent you from finding out the truth, the more likely it is to be worth reporting to the public.

Wakefield went from “hilarious money hungry quack” to “abominable human shaped creature” in like 10 minutes

my mother was one of the people who believed Wakefield (idk if she still does, we don't talk anymore) so when the time came she paid for me to have the MMR in separate doses so I "wouldn't get autism" (around £180) which will never not be funny to me because I was later diagnosed as autistic anyway

My dad was a COVID vaccine denier. He's always been afraid of needles, and even though he was okay with getting the flu shot every year, when COVID began happening he was convinced they were rushing the job to get the vaccine out and it was therefore unsafe and part of a larger conspiracy. My mom (a nurse) and I tried multiple times over the early pandemic to convince him to come get vaccinated (we both did as soon as it was possible for us), but he wouldn't budge. Eventually, my mom told me he couldn't be convinced and to just drop it. In December 2022, he got COVID - and a pretty bad case at that. He was bedridden for a week and it took him a couple more to return to a general normal. He lost all sense of smell and taste, and even though it mostly recovered, it's still much weaker than it used to be and it goes in and out for him. He's got long COVID too - brain fog, neurological problems, fatigue, and more. He tells me often how disappointed he is in himself for having shunned the vaccine, knowing that it may have saved him all this pain. Go get vaccinated - even if you don't think you need it.

as someone with autism i'd rather have autism than die from measles