Friday, May 30, 2008

Anti-vaccine autism activists to rally in DC June 4


Led by actors Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey, the DC Rally for Autism will be June 4. The Green Our Vaccines Rally will begin in front of Sylvan Theatre on the Washington Monument grounds with a march that will last until 12:30 p.m., according to Talk About Curing Autism (TACA).

Rally organizers say their message is "We are not anti-vaccine, we are anti-toxins. Green our Vaccines!!"

Participants will "demand Congress take action to Green Our Vaccine Supply while reassessing our current vaccine schedule. Ask Congress to reenact legislation that would eliminate mercury and other toxins from our children's vaccines, study the instance of autism and other neurological disorders in vaccinated versus unvaccinated children, and to extend the statute of limitations to allow all children affected by vaccine-induced autism to file in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP)."

One West Virginia family says they are going to the Rally because they believe a vaccination gave their son autism, WSAZ reports.

"We want to clean these vaccines up, make them more environmentally friendly, make them where they're not going to hurt our children," said Bridgette Nelson, whose son was diagnosed with autism.

Nelson says it wasn't long after her son Parker's shots at 15 months that she noticed something was wrong. "He had run a slight fever after the vaccinations, but I didn't think anything of it," said Nelson. "You know kids run fevers all the time, but about a week after that he just completely stopped talking."

After several months, he was officially diagnosed with autism.

"Gradually, I started piecing it together. He got sick after his vaccinations and about a week later everything changed. He was a completely different little boy then," said Nelson.